Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/142

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124
A DESCRIPTION OF

fine parade, and the apartments within are very convenient.

I walked round Salisbury Crags, in the middle path by the quarries, which requires a tolerably steady head; for had I taken a roll down the precipice, there would have been an end of me. At the quarries I saw vast heaps of the hard rock divided into small pieces, ready for shipping; and I was told great quantities of that crag were sent to London for paving the streets. After I had descended Salisbury Crags, and crossed the road by which the carts carry the broken stones into town, I came to some fragments of rocks, where I made my servant try to discover the fine echo, in which he at length succeeded; and I thought it the most distinct I had ever heard. By continuing the track I was in, I came to a new foot-way round the base of Arthur's Seat. The large pieces of rock strewed on the green below the path, a few years back, broke away from the mountain with a tremendous noise, to the great terror of the washerwomen and bleachers, constantly busy on that green; but very fortunately, as a talkative gude wife told me, none of them were very near that spot at the moment the huge pieces of rock separated from the mountain. From that foot-way I had a distant view of Crag