The French-American, Louis Simond, 1811
Calton Gaol
August 2. - We slept at merry Carlisle (dull and ugly enough), 42 miles; and to-day, by Longtown and Langholm, to Hawick, 44 miles. About twelve miles north of Carlisle, our post boy shewed us a tree which divides the two kingdoms; a nominal division, which brings to mind forcibly the unhappy times when this very frontier was a desert, called debateable lands, open to the reciprocal depredations of the lawless borderers on both sides, and that little more than one hundred years ago.
We passed this afternoon a tract of country very different from England. It is a succession of steep hills, with intervening vallies, all uniformly covered with a fine green turf, smooth, and unbroken by a single tree, bush, weed, or stone; sheep hanging along the sides of the acclivities, and here and there a shepherd-boy wrapped up in his plaid-nothing to interrupt the sameness and stillness, but the little stream bustling along each valley, over a bed of round pebbles. The Scotch are said to be more industrious and more thrifty than the Welsh. They cannot afford leisure, I suppose, to be comfortable, and certainly do not ruin themselves by luxuries. Children, in health and in rags, with fair hair and dirty faces, swarm on the dunghills at each door. An old barrel stuck through the thatch serves for a chimney. The stable and dwelling are under the same roof; one door serves for both - and the dark runnings from the heap of dung, and the heap of peat, piled up against the house, drain under the floor, and some upon it. The climate must be healthy indeed, where all this does not breed infection. The fields of potatoes and oats seem in the best state, and the people are making hay everywhere.
We meet with strings of light one horse carts, driven by only one man - a much better contrivance than the English heavy waggons. The men along the roads have generally the plaid thrown across their shoulder, and over one arm. Some wear it like a Spanish cloak, or an antique drapery, and, with their short petticoat and naked knees, might be mistaken for Roman soldiers, if the vulgar contrivance of hat and shoes did not betray the northern barbarian. The females have their extremities more classical, for they go bare-footed and bareheaded, and only fail by the middle, covered with vile stiff stays and petticoats. We see them at the fords of their little brooks, exhibiting, very innocently I believe, higher than the knee, unmindful of the eye of travellers.
August l0 .- Edinburgh, by Selkirk, 47 miles. We have crossed to-day the Tweed, the Etterick, and the Yarrow, the names of which sound poetical in our ears.
This is a town of 90 or 100,000 inhabitants (the tenth part of London), in three distinct divisions; the old and the new town side by side, with the wide ditch between; then the port, (seaport) at about a mile distance, on the Firth of Forth. The shops, tradesmen, and labourers, are mostly in the old town. The college is there also, but learning begins to be attracted by politeness, and the professors come to live in the region of good dinners and fine ladies.
August 18. - We have just seen the penitentiary house [Calton Gaol], constructed on a very ingenious plan-a semicircular building, seven stories high, each containing fourteen cells, all open towards the common centre, which is like a great well open from top to bottom. A bow window, with lattices, repeated at each story, overlooks them all, and nothing can be done by the prisoners without being seen; they work solitary, and in silence, in these 98 cells; and at night sleep in other little rooms behind them. This tower, or rather section of a tower, is lighted by a sky light, and well ventilated. No bad smells - no noise - great order - all as well as possible; except that the correction does not correct; and the same individuals are observed to return from time to time to enjoy again this philosophical retirement. A thing happened to us here which deserves to be mentioned. I had observed written over the door, an injunction not to give any money; but the woman who conducted us was so obliging, that I could not believe she did not expect some recompense for her trouble, and she received what I gave her without saying any thing; but when, on leaving the house, I was going to put something into the box for poor prisoners, the keeper said it was unnecessary, as the woman who had accompanied us had just put in the half crown I had given her! We had not seen her do it; she had disappeared immediately, and could have no motive of ostentation; nobody was present when she received the money.
A large and convenient house in the best part of Edinburgh [Queen Street] built of freestone, has just been sold for £3,000; another nearly equal, for £2,500; and in inferior streets, very good houses may be had for £1,800, or hired for £100 a-year, and about £30 taxes. A manservant £40 a-year; a woman-cook £12; a maid-servant £8. A carriage, including coachman, and every thing else, £250 a-year.
During the nine days we have spent at Edinburgh, there has not been a single one without some showers of rain; but we are told it is after a long drought. The temperature of the air varies from 60 to 72 degrees. It is strange to see the women going about the streets bare-footed, on the pavement, which is very smooth, but continually wet; they are in other respects cleanly dressed, even with gloves on, and an umbrella. The fish-market is supplied by women, who come some miles with enormous loads of fish on their backs, strapped across the breast. Their husbands are out all night in their boats, catching these fish, with which the women leave home at break of day. They look strong, healthy, and very cheerful, singing along the road; but in general remarkably ugly; and among the lower people in Scotland, the sex is certainly not beautiful.
We have reason to be grateful for the hospitality shewn us at Edinburgh, and we do not leave it without regret.
August 21. - At Lanark, we stopped a moment at a cotton-manufactory [New Lanark]. It was the first established in Scotland, and the most considerable. It is certainly a prodigious establishment. We saw four stone buildings, 150 feet front each, four stories high of twenty windows, and several other buildings, less considerable - 2,500 workmen, mostly children, who work from six o'clock in the morning till seven o'clock in the evening, having in that interval an hour and a quarter allowed for their meals; at night, from eight to ten for school. These children are taken into employment at eight years old, receiving five shillings a-week; when older, they get as much as half-a-guinea. Part of them inhabit houses close to the manufactory, others at Lanark, one mile distance; and we were assured the latter are distinguished from the others by healthier looks, due to the exercise this distance obliges them to take-four miles a day. Eleven hours of confinement and labour, with the schooling, thirteen hours, is undoubtedly too much for children. I think the laws should interfere between avarice and nature. I must acknowledge, at the same time, that the little creatures we saw did not look ill.
August 24 .- On our arrival in Glasgow this morning, we found at the inn several notes of invitation, and offers of service, as obliging as unexpected. We have seen carding and spinning-mills, weaving-mills, mills for everything. The human hand and human intelligence are not separated; and mere physical force is drawn from air and water alone, by means of the steam-engine. Manufactories, thus associated with science, seem to produce with the facility and fecundity of nature. It is impossible to see without astonishment these endless flakes of cotton, as light as snow, and as white, ever pouring from the carding-machine, then seized by the teeth of innumerable wheels and cylinders, and stretched into threads, flowing like a rapid stream, and lost in the tourbillon of spindles. The eye of a child or of a woman watches over the blind mechanism directing the motions of her whirling battalion, rallying disordered and broken threads, and repairing unforeseen accidents. The shuttle likewise, untouched, shoots to and fro by an invisible force; and the weaver, no longer cramped upon his uneasy seat, but merely overlooking his self moving looms, produces forty-eight yards of cloth in a day, instead of four or five yards.
Jan. 1. 1811 - There is no sleeping the first night of the year at Edinburgh. It is a received custom for the common people to give a kiss to any woman met in the streets, about midnight, on foot, or in carriages. Few women expose themselves to this rude salutation. But the streets are full, notwithstanding, of unruly boys, who knock at house doors, and make a noise all night. This is a little relic of the coarse manners of former times, which is still tolerated; and, considering what this country was before its union with England, there is, perhaps, more reason to be astonished at the advanced state of its police, than otherwise.
Jan. 14 1811 - The winter has been felt severely in England; there has been much snow there, and the Thames has been frozen over; while here, in the latitude of Moscow, we have no snow; the grass is still green; the ground has scarcely been hard the whole winter, and skaiters have had but a few days amusement, on the piece of water at the foot of Arthur's Seat [Duddingston Loch].
Feb. 1 1811 - There has been a snow storm in the night, and it blows a hurricane; tiles fly across the streets and tops of chimneys fall on the pavement, to the great annoyance of passengers, and danger of their lives. The house we inhabit, built sensibly of stone, is sensibly shaken by the wind. There is at the end of our street, on the mound, an itinerant menagerie built of boards; if it should be blown down, the people of Edinburgh might see at large in their streets two lions, two royal tigers, a panther, and an elephant
Sept. 1. - To Killin, only 21 miles to-day, through much the same sort of country as yesterday; glen after glen - green, and bare, and deserted, with towering hills all round; one of them seemed to have the form of an immense crater - a hollow cup - but all the detached masses below were granite and schistus, and nothing volcanic. Beautiful pieces of quartz lay about everywhere. Some of the hills could not be less than 2,000 feet high. The Tay, an inconsiderable mountain torrent, descended with us the whole day. The question occurs naturally in traversing these solitudes, where are the men? Where are the Highlanders? And if you are told that the system of sheep-farming has banished them from their country, then you would be apt to ask, where are the sheep? Very few indeed are seen; the grass is evidently not half eaten down-hardly touched, indeed, in many places. We met to-day, however, with several habitations, and we entered some of them: a small present was willingly received, and served as a passport to our curiosity. The only door is common to men and beasts, and, of course, very dirty. You see, as you come in, on one side a small stable, which seems very unnecessary, since, in the much more rigorous climate of North America, cattle have commonly no shelter in winter. The other side is separated by a rough partition; this is the dwelling-place of the family; you find in it not a chimney, but a fire-place on the ground, with a few stones round it, immediately under a hole in the roof; a hook and chain fastened to a stick, to hang an iron kettle on; a deal table; a piece of board, on which oat-cakes are prepared; a dresser, with some little earthenware; an old press; a pickling-tub for mutton; some pieces of mutton hung in the smoke, which winds round them on its way to the roof; a shelf with many cheeses, and among the cheeses a few books The beds were a filthy mattrass, and a filthy blanket - no sheets; no floor - only the ground trodden hard; a window of four small panes, not one entire. Such is the interior; and to finish the picture of these hovels, each has its ladder against the roof; either to stop the progress of fire, when the thatch happens to catch, or a leak, which they do by means of a few sods. Some of the roofs bore a luxuriant crop of grass. This is abject poverty, or at least appears so; yet these people feel no want, and enjoy health, which is more than many do who are rich. Their poverty does not seem to extend to food, for they have plenty of fish from their lakes and rivers; and one acre of potatoes can feed a family. They have also a small field of oats; meat is not probably very scarce near such flocks of sheep, and I saw hogs today. Fuel is at their door. Labour is paid 2s 6d. or 3s. a day.
September 2 - To-day being Sunday, the road was full of country people going to church, in their best clothes. They were all clean and decent. About half the men wore the kilt, and tartan hose, and plaid over their shoulders, and they looked best. The women by no means handsome, nor indeed the men, but healthy and active. The men generally touched their hats or highland bonnet, as they passed us. We were rather ashamed of our Sunday travelling.
