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 to the south we have a perfect tableland of small mountains, the Leadhills range being a little to the east, those near Sanquhar due south, and those near Dalmellington to the west, Blackcraig and Enoch’s Hill being prominent between. Behind a small cairn to the west of the two greater ones there is a very fine spring, the waters of which, falling into the valley below, divide into two little streams. The one part, under the name of the Garpel, runs into the Firth of Clyde at Ayr, through the channel of the water of Ayr; the other, the Duneaton, runs to the Clyde at Abingdon, and joins its long-lost sister waters in the Firth, which we can see where we stand, after a most interesting and no doubt useful course of more than 100 miles. Looking east and north, we see the outline of the Lowther range, the southern Grampians, with Culter Fell, Tinto, and over Tinto the Pentlands.

Our solitude is all the more apparent by a curlew and a plover which circle round and round uttering most piteous cries, as if to say, “What strange being are you? Have you come here to rob us of the early worm?” One of the hunting spiders settles down beside us. It spins no web, and depends on its power of leaping to catch its prey, and to watch its movements is quite a study. It is a good fighter, and will fight the garden spider, though it is larger than itself. It may not be generally known that spiders have been worn in nut-shells and goose-quills round the neck to drive disease and the devil away. But we will pass from such a subject, for most people hold it in aversion, from the “little Miss Muffit,” who “sat on a tuffit,” to the cleanly housewife.