four miles, our road
being not close to it, but above its banks, along the open country, which
was here occasionally intersected by hedgerows.

Left our car in the road, and turned down a field to the Fall of
Stonebyres, another of the falls of the Clyde, which I had not heard
spoken of; therefore it gave me the more pleasure. We saw it from the
top of the bank of the river at a little distance. It has not the
imposing majesty of Cora Linn; but it has the advantage of being left to
itself, a grand solitude in the heart of a populous country. We had a
prospect above and below it, of cultivated grounds, with hay-stacks,
houses, hills; but the river's banks were lonesome, steep, and woody,
with rocks near the fall.

A little further on, came more into company with the river; sometimes we
were close to it, sometimes above it, but always at no great distance;
and now the vale became more interesting and amusing. It is very
populous, with villages, hamlets, single cottages, or farm-houses
embosomed in orchards, and scattered over with gentlemen's houses, some
of them very ugly, tall and obtrusive, others neat and comfortable. We
seemed now to have got into a country where poverty and riches were
shaking hands together; pears and apples, of which the crop was abundant,
hung over the road, often growing in orchards unfenced; or there might be
bunches of broom along the road-side in an interrupted line, that looked
like a hedge till we came to it and saw the gaps. Bordering on these
fruitful orchards perhaps would be a patch, its chief produce being gorse
or broom. There was nothing like a moor or common anywhere; but small
plots of uncultivated ground were left high and low, among the potatoes,
corn, cabbages, which grew intermingled, now among trees, now bare. The
Trough of the Clyde is, indeed, a singular and very interesting region;
it is somewhat like the upper part of the vale of Nith, but above the
Nith is much less cultivated ground--without hedgerows or orchards, or
anything that looks like a rich country. We met crowds of people coming
from the kirk; the lasses were gaily dressed, often in white gowns,
coloured satin bonnets, and coloured silk handkerchiefs, and generally
with their shoes and stockings in a bundle hung on their arm. Before we
left the river the vale became much less interesting, resembling a poor
English country, the fields being large, and unluxuriant hedges.

It had been dark long before