the right — the turbid little stream, oozing
away from the works, and men and boys,
with hoes, spades, and scrapers, washing the
soil, on stage below stage, so that what
escaped from one set of channels might run
into the one below. It seemed a piece of
unnecessary toil to place the square tower of
the smelting-house— the tower whence the
smoke belched forth— so high up the steep
and stony breast of the hill. It afterwards
appeared that nobody had occasion to
go up there. The smoke was driven, by the
blast of the furnace, through the interior of
the hill, to issue forth from that top of
its chimney which looks like a tower from
below.

A succeeding ascent hid from us what we
were now looking for with some anxiety, as
our ride had occupied nearly an hour and
three-quarters, and we had been churned
enough for one day. The village, we were
told, was "just behind there," and there it
was— the strangest of British villages. The
valley suddenly opens out into an area of
undulating character, bounded by more distant
hills. Rows of cottages stand on all available
platforms, turned in all directions. Many—
sadly too many— are dismantled and ruinous,
roofless and grass-grown— the first evidence
that meets the eye of the mischief wrought
by the protracted litigation which has half
ruined a place even so remote as this. Beside
one of these ruins may be a roof just fresh
thatched with heather; and, on the other
hand, may be a roof bristling with weeds, and
with grass that sways in the wind. Scattered
about, amidst the wild vegetation of the
moorland, up and down, turned this way and that,
are little oblong patches of cabbages, turnips,
or potatoes. Formerly, in the better days of
the settlement, the miners were allowed to
appropriate from the moorland as much as
they could cultivate with the spade in
overhours. This is no longer permitted; but the
extent of ground thus under tillage is nearly
four hundred acres.

Glancing over the neighbouring slopes,
we saw a man mowing some most
unpromising grass. Another was coming up
from a boggy place with an enormous
bundle of rushes on his head. High up
on a ridge, a man's figure was seen, digging
peat. Three sheep were within sight, and
several cows. It was a comfort to see so
good a supply of cows for the number of
persons. The number of persons is
prepetually diminishing, under the curse of the
litigation before spoken of.

There are some old books on the shelves
of the agent's office, which give the information
that in the early half of the last century
the population at Leadhills amounted to
upwards of fourteen hundred. Twenty years
ago, it was about eleven hundred; it is now
between eight and nine hundred. Of these,
one hundred and ten are able-bodied men.
There are some old men able to do some
work, or none. Such as these were formerly
maintained by their sons; but, under the
present rate of wages (which average nine
shillings per week) the reluctance to look to
the parish for an ultimate support is fast
diminishing. There is a baker in the place,
of course, and there are no less than three
tailors. Some few men are employed in
blanket-weaving. Here and there we saw
some old men sitting in the sun, smoking and
chatting; and one or two were returning
from their morning's task, who were still
capable, at the age of seventy and upwards,
of doing some hours' work in the day at
washing the ore. But a man who can do
this at such an age, may be safely supposed
not to have worked under ground in his
earlier days. There are no less than from
eighty to ninety cows in this village— a very
large proportion for the number of people.
It is explained by the fact, that the customary
diet of the population is that which we saw
the two quarrymen enjoying by the roadside
— oat-cake and milk. Meat is an almost
unknown luxury, even in the form of bacon.
We had not before— nor have we now— a
high opinion of the wholesomeness of oatmeal
diet; but it is certainly the fact, that the
people of Leadhills, living on a poor soil, in
the midst of metallic works, at a height of
one thousand two hundred and eighty-six
feet above the level of the sea, have a remarkably
healthy appearance, notwithstanding the
presence of the fumes of the smelting, and
the absence of a meat diet. There is a
tombstone in the cemetery, which is shown with
pride to the stranger, recording as it does
the death of a man, a miner, who had lived
one hundred and thirty-seven years. He must
have been a brave old fellow; for he used to
go a fishing among the hills, all alone, when
he was one hundred and twenty years old.
What a strange meditation must his have
been, in such a solitude— supposing him to
have retained his faculties— which he seems
to have done. As he walked slowly along
playing his line, as men do in those mountain
streams, was he tired of life, looking back on a
succession of generations, with whom he ought,
in natural course, to have gone to the grave?
Did he fear in his heart, as an aged woman once
did openly, that God had forgotten him? Or
did it seem to him, as it does to some who
have outlived all they once knew, a perfectly
natural thing that they should have died, and
that he should be there to tell the history of
their deaths? Did he think of the armies
that had come that way marching over the
hills with music and shouts, every man of
whom had become dust? What did he think
of the greybeards of the village, getting past
their work, when he remembered that he had
dandled some of them as infants after he
himself had reached threescore years and ten?
The everlasting hills, with their inexhaustible
streams, were the same as ever; and he
probably thought himself the same as ever. But,