Читать книгу Our Western Hills: How to reach them; And the Views from their Summits. By a Glasgow Pedestrian онлайн

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Looking west, we have on our left hand the united parishes of Wiston and Roberton, with the Garf finding its way into the Clyde. We have now time after feasting our eyes in every direction to think of the hill itself. It is a wondrous mixture of volcanic product, a perfect museum of minerals—overlapping a huge mass of transition rocks. It probably bubbled into being in a series of red-hot upheavals at an epoch when all that which is now the low country of Lanarkshire was a muddy, torrid sea. It was much frequented by our heathen ancestors for their sanguinary Druidical rites, and perhaps blazed often with both their fires of idolatrous worship and their signal fires of war; for its name signifies “the Hill of Fire.”

There is ancient precedent for the building of a cairn to commemorate any striking event. It is a favourite Scripture method of memorial, and has been much practised in our own Highlands. But as we stand by the side of the immense cairn which crowns Tinto, and which is understood to be equal to about 300 cart loads, we could not help feeling sympathy for our poor forefathers, who are said to have carried them up piecemeal through a series of ages, in the way of penance, from a famous Roman Catholic church which was situated in a little glen at the north-east skirt of the mountain, and we could not help saying that “the former times were” not “better than these.” We found that we had to pay for our splendid position by being exposed all through our stay on the summit to a stiff south-west wind, which reminded us of the popular rhyme—