Scotland -- Description and travel -- Juvenile literature
"At Edinburgh," said Mr. George. "It is the place where Mary lived. We
shall see the little room there where they murdered her poor secretary,
David Rizzio."
"What did they murder him for?" asked Waldron.
"O, you will see when you come to read the history," said Mr. George.
"It is a very curious story."
CHAPTER XII.
EDINBURGH.
From Loch Leven Castle our party returned in the coach to the railway
station, and thence proceeded to Edinburgh. They crossed the Frith of
Forth by a ferry, at a place where it was about five miles wide.
Edinburgh is considered one of the most remarkable cities in the world,
in respect to the picturesqueness of its situation. It stands upon and
among a very extraordinary group of steep hills and deep valleys. A part
of it is very ancient, and another part is quite modern, so that in
describing it, it is often said that it consists of the old town and the
new town. But it seems to me that a more obvious distinction would be,
to divide it into the upper town and the lower town; for there are
almost literally two towns, one upon the top of the other. The upper
town is built on the hills. The lower one lies in the valleys. The
streets of the upper town are connected by bridges; and when you stand
upon one of these bridges, and look down, you see a street instead of a
river below, with ranges of strange and antique-looking buildings on
each side, for banks, and a current of men, women, and children flowing
along, instead of water.
The different portions of the lower town, on the other hand, are
connected by tunnels and arched passage ways under the bridges above
described; and then there are flights of steps, and steep winding or
zigzag paths, leading up and down between the lower streets and the
upper, in the most surprising manner.
There are twenty places, more or less, in the town, where you have two
streets crossing each other at right angles, one fifty feet below the
other, with an immense traffic of horses, carriages, carts, and foot
passengers, going to and fro in both of them. You come upon these places
sometimes very unexpectedly. You are walking along on the pavement of a
crowded street, when you come suddenly upon the break, or interruption
in the line of building on each side. The space is occupied by a
parapet, or by a high iron balustrade. You stop to look over, expecting
to see a river or a canal; instead of which, you find yourself looking
down into the chimneys of four-story houses bordering another street
below you, which is so far down that the people walking in it, and the
children playing on the sidewalk, look like pygmies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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