adhills at nine o'clock, regretting
much that we could not stay another day, that we might have made more
minute inquiries respecting the manner of living of the miners, and been
able to form an estimate, from our own observation, of the degree of
knowledge, health, and comfort that there was among them. The air was
keen and cold; we might have supposed it to be three months later in the
season and two hours earlier in the day. The landlady had not lighted us
a fire; so I was obliged to get myself toasted in the kitchen, and when
we set off I put on both grey cloak and spencer.

Our road carried us down the valley, and we soon lost sight of Leadhills,
for the valley made a turn almost immediately, and we saw two miles,
perhaps, before us; the glen sloped somewhat rapidly--heathy, bare, no
hut or house. Passed by a shepherd, who was sitting upon the ground,
reading, with the book on his knee, screened from the wind by his plaid,
while a flock of sheep were feeding near him among the rushes and coarse
grass--for, as we descended we came among lands where grass grew with the
heather. Travelled through several reaches of the glen, which somewhat
resembled the valley of Menock on the other side of Wanlockhead; but it
was not near so beautiful; the forms of the mountains did not melt so
exquisitely into each other, and there was a coldness, and, if I may so
speak, a want of simplicity in the surface of the earth; the heather was
poor, not covering a whole hillside; not in luxuriant streams and beds
interveined with rich verdure; but patchy and stunted, with here and
there coarse grass and rushes. But we soon came in sight of a spot that
impressed us very much. At the lower end of this new reach of the vale
was a decayed tree, beside a decayed cottage, the vale spreading out into
a level area which was one large field, without fence and without
division, of a dull yellow colour; the vale seemed to partake of the
desolation of the cottage, and to participate in its decay. And yet the
spot was in its nature so dreary that one would rather have wondered how
it ever came to be tenanted by man, than lament that it was left to waste
and solitude. Yet the encircling hills were so exquisitely formed that
it was impossible to conceive anything more lovely than this place would
have been if the valley and hill-sides had been interspersed with trees,
cottages, green fields, and hedgerows. But all was desolate; the one
large field