Page:Footsteps of Dr. Johnson.djvu/199

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YARROW UNVISITED.
157

solation to be found. The long drought of nearly two months which had preceded my tour had dried up those rivulets which Johnson crossed, running, as he describes them, "with a clear, shallow stream over a hard, pebbly bottom."

CLUNIE.
CLUNIE.

CLUNIE.

The main river had still water in it; but we saw few indeed of "the streams rushing down the steep" which fed it. In that part of the narrow valley where he reposed we should have had only a choice of dried-up watercourses, had we tried to select the bank on which he sat. For me Yarrow still remains unvisited. I have still to see

"Its silvery current flow
With uncontrolled meanderings."

Passing through Glen Clunie, which now boasts of a little inn where the traveller can find clean, if homely lodgings, they reached Glen Shiel. It is worth notice that though the word Glen is in Johnson's Dictionary, so unfamiliar was it at this time to English ears, that using it in the letter in which he describes this day's journey, he adds, "so they call a valley." In Glen Shiel, writes Boswell,