Our Western Hills.
Uniform with this Volume.
One Shilling: Cloth, 1s. 6d.
The Elder at the Plate. A Collection of Anecdotesand Incidents relating to Church Door Collections.By Nicholas Dickson.
The Kirk Beadle. A Collection of Anecdotes andIncidents relating to the Minister’s Man. ByNicholas Dickson.
Anecdotes and Reminiscences of George Gilfillan.By David Macrae.
Literary Coincidences, A Bookstall Bargain, and otherPapers. By W. A. Clouston.
Personal Adventures by a Detective. Pages fromNote Books of Lieut. A. Carmichael, GlasgowDetective Department.
OUR WESTERN HILLS:
How to reach them;
And the Views from their Summits.
By
A Glasgow Pedestrian.
Glasgow:
Morison Brothers,
1892.
To James R. Manners, Esq.
My dear Mr. Manners,
Among many ways in which a holiday, ora Saturday afternoon, can be profitably and enjoyablyspent by those members of the community whom thelate Dr. Andrew Wynter designated as “our workingbees,” there should be none more attractive than aclimb to the top of some of our highest western hills.The following pages, which are respectfully dedicatedto you who suggested them, make no pretence tofine writing or original matter, but are simply a shortand, I trust, readable guide to those who care to makea journey to the hilltops which they attempt to describe.The hills that find a place in these pages are accessibleto all who are capable of average physical endurance,and the account of what may be seen from their topsand in their immediate neighbourhood may help toadd to the pleasurable emotions that are certain toarise from a visit to them. We certainly miss at homethe solemn and almost unearthly look of the Alps, butour Scottish hills have a greater variety in colour, size,and shape, and many of them have historical andantiquarian associations which help to make themthe more interesting to those who climb them. Itis astonishing, considering what a wealth of mountainscenery we have in Scotland, that their cult shouldhave been so late and should still be so scanty. Thereare those who are nothing if they are not practical,and who see in a mountain or a range of hills littlemore than so many acres or tons of waste soil, whichwould have had a much greater economic value if itcould be levelled down in some way. We canscarcely hope to interest such; but people are gettingmore alive to the value and significance of mountains,and are beginning to feel that if there be healthypower anywhere on earth for the wasted body, orthe sorrowing soul, or larger thoughts of God andof ourselves, they are to be found on the top of somelofty hill. Who can long be sick at heart with theglory of hill and dale and sky about him? and whofrail of step with his nostrils full of the scent of variednature, and his tread on the springy heather? Indeed,it has been truly said that “the mountain