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

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The hedges look beautiful, hung as they are with garlands of the milk-white thorn; and those who care for a study of silver and blue may have it now. The silver—the drifted snow of the water crowfoot, the wee crimson-tipped daisy, and the pendent snowballs of the wild cherry. Of the blue—patches of wild hyacinth, with just shade enough for varying tones from the purple spikes of the unfolding bells in the deeper shade to where the sunshine ripples on paler blue, in charming contrast to the new spring grass. The summit is reached from the western side, there being a pathway through the trees, and, though a little toilsome, the ascent is more than repaid by a most extensive prospect.

The hill is round, conical, and of romantic appearance, formed of columnar trap, and part of an extensive trap-dike which is said to trouble the whole coalfield of Ayrshire in a north-westerly and south-easterly direction, having its beginning in the vicinity of Greenock. Looking north and east and south, there is little within the first 8 or 9 miles but a wide expanse of moorland, that, with the exception of one or two spots on which farmhouses stand, seems to stretch for miles. About a mile to the north-east is the schoolhouse of Drumclog, and a small monument marking the spot where Claverhouse and his dragoons were routed by the Covenanters under Hamilton, Burley, Cleland, and Hackston, on June 1st, 1679, a Sabbath morning. In this affair Claverhouse lost his cornet and about a score of his troopers, while the Covenanters lost only four men. This whole district, being quite inaccessible to cavalry, was a favourite place for the holding of conventicles. The locality, as well as the engagement itself, are described in “Old Mortality,” and by Allan Cunningham in his poem, “The Discomfiture of the Godless at Drumclog.”