doom them to emaciation on the coarse
fodder which is in preparation for them
below. Here and there, a few cattle are seen,
and a young horse, in some distant field, may
fling up his heels at the train. A group of
bare-headed and bare-footed children may be
at play on some tiny bridge over a pretence
of a burn or rivulet, and a hen and her
chickens may scratch up the sand below in
defiance of the intrusion of the strangers
from the south, with their steam and their
noise. But this is nearly all that is seen,
between station and station, unless where the
hills have been laid open for stone, slate,
or ore.

The most obvious thought suggested by this
scene — so strange in our busy islands— is,
that it will not long be to be seen. If our
capitalists and labourers are emigrating to
new lands for the sake of more space, a
district of this extent will not remain so
scantily peopled. Along the railway, at least,
there will be a fringe of producers and
traffickers, who will essentially alter the
character of the landscape. The next consideration
which will occur to most people is, that
they here see— what is not a very common
thing to see— a large district which must be,
in the main, very much like what it was
hundreds or thousands of years ago. One of
the railway stations is at Abington, a rather
pretty hamlet, with one or two good houses
near; and more wood, more cultivation, a
more modern aspect than many of the stations
before and after it. From this place, a valley
runs up among the hills, away from the sound
of the railway whistle, and of the din of
human life altogether. In this valley the
Romans certainly were, once upon a time.
A military road of theirs passes near; and
in, and near this valley, are the tokens of their
encampment. Whether the valley was wooded
then and cleared by them, we cannot undertake
to say. but the probability seems to be,
that it must have looked to the Roman eye,
on entering, much as it now looks to the eye
of any modern foreigner. Its hills, green and
bare, with metallic indications, showing
themselves in places, with heather on the higher
slopes, and bog in the bottoms— these features
appear to be about as primitive as any
natural scenery can well be. That it was
much like what it now is, midway between
the Roman period and ours, is known.

At the time when Edward the Third of
England was watching his son, the Black
Prince, winning his spurs, or was trying to
make his way safely out of some very difficult
and dangerous valleys in France;— at the
time when Scotland was mourning her
David Bruce, a prisoner in the Tower; or,
perhaps, rejoicing at the sight of him, returned
on his parole;— at that time, when the nations
were so busy with war as not to be able to
look closely after what lay round about them
at home— a foreigner was poking about in
this valley to see what he could find. A
German, named Bulmer, was looking for
gold amidst these Scottish hills; and he came
into this valley, and found something else
besides gold. He found LEAD; and the fate
of the valley has been ruled by that
discovery of his, ever since. The valley we
speak of is that which contains the curious
village of Leadhills, at its highest end; a
settlement six miles from Abington, and as
wild a place as can well be seen in our
islands.

Having a fancy to see so odd a place, and
having heard much, twenty years ago, of the
intelligence and other good qualities of the
inhabitants, we recently determined to go. At
Abington, a carriage was to have met us;
but there was a mistake about it, and no
carriage was forthcoming. The morning was
hot, and the hours were precious; so that
we were glad to obtain any sort of vehicle
that would save our strength and our time.
The vehicle proposed was a cart— such as
had probably conveyed in its day more pigs
and calves than human beings. It was half
filled with straw, on which was laid a bolster,
and over the bolster was laid a clean plaid.
Off we went, under the care of an intelligent
labourer, whose Scotch dialect was of so
moderate a character that conversation would have
been easy, but for the slow trot of the horse,
which made our words come out like puffs of
steam from the engine which had just left us
behind. By a gradual ascent, on a good road,
we penetrated the recesses of the hills, seeing
nobody but two men eating oat-cake and
drinking milk at the mouth of their little
quarry, and two women at the cottage
beside the toll-bar where the carts of coke
pay toll on their way up to the mines. During
the journey of six miles we saw three trees;
one in a field on the upland, looking rather
sad, all by itself; and two more down in a
field at the bottom, marking the spot where
Bulmer found his gold five hundred years
ago. A woman, down in the bog, had her
arms full of what appeared to be rushes; and
a solitary man, high up on the steep, was
cutting heather— no doubt to mend his own
or some neighbour's thatch. Grass, and
groundsel, and hemlock grew to the height
of a foot along the ridge, and down the sides
of two or three of the first cottages we saw.
We inquired why, as slate was quarried
(under the name of Edge-metal, from the
layers standing on edge) in this very valley,
the cottages were so wretchedly roofed. The
answer was, that there had never been any
thought of using so good a material as even
this very poor slate. Without this remark,
we should have discovered that the people at
Leadhills were very very poor.

From far below, we had seen smoke hanging
about an opening before us. This was from
the smelting-houses, the driver informed us;
and the village lay a mile and a half further
on. The road crossed the valley near the
smelting-houses; and they lay below us on