me to Lanark; the fall of the Clyde at the Corra Linn, or Pool. I did not think that any thing of the kind in Scotland could make a more forcible impression on my senses and imagination than the falls of Foyers and the Devon; but the Corra Linn astonished me still more, and made a deeper and more awful impression. It is not without reason that the falls of the Clyde are accounted the grandest and most picturesque scene of the kind in Britain. About three miles above Lanark, the Clyde, the greatest river in Scotland next to the Tay, and nearly as large as the Thames at Wallingford, tumbles, in one cataract, from rock to rock, for about the space of a mile. At Stone-Byers, it makes one entire shoot over the rock, and falls between sixty and seventy feet. At the Corra-Linn, where it falls a hundred feet, it does not, like that at Stone-Byers, rush over the rock in one uniform sheet, but at three different places, bounds a little, as if with renovated vigour and impatient of delay, in its precipitate and furious course. I am really at a loss how to describe the effect produced by those tremendous cascades. After seeing the smoke ascending for more than a mile as I advanced, I first heard, and then saw the Clyde roaring and raging, as if provoked at resistance. The question started in my mind: "Is Nature, then, so bustling and noisy in her operations? so tumultuous, rapid, and impetuous?" I had, in common, I suppose, with others, conceived of nature as something, though ever busy, yet still, quiescent, and imperceptible in its operations. I now almost started to see her in so unexpected a form. To the eye of Reason her never-ceasing hand is seen in the vicissitudes of scasons and the growth of plants, as well as in roaring cascades, the billows of the ocean, or thunder and earthquakes. But it is not so with the imagination. Where the water begins to fall down the horrid chasm, at the Corra Linn, on a projecting rock there stands an old castle, which, in the earlier part of the last century, was inhabited. It was certainly one of the most romantic and awful situations in which ever mansion stood. When the river is swoln with rain or dissolving snow, it shakes in such a manner as to spill water in a glass. On the edge of this stupendous fall is a mill, formed partly by scooping the rock, the outer wheel of which seems ready to be dashed in pieces even by the skirts of its foam. On a high rocky bank, overlooking the Linn, there is a summer-house, which was built in 1703 by Sir James Carmichael, of Bonniton. From the uppermost room of this maison de plaisance there is a prospect of the fall, very curious as well as otherwise striking. Immediately on entering, as you throw your eyes towards a mirror placed on the side opposite to the fall, you see the whole of the mighty cataract, pouring, as it were, on your head. There is not any point of view from which the Corra Linn is not seen with astonishment, and a mixture of awe and horror. The roaring and raging of the water as it falls, its hollow murmurs in the chasm below, the screaming of wild fowl, and wood-clad rocks, form altogether a scene grand and wildly pleasing. |