TINTO.
If any one wishes for perfect quiet, and to be well out of the way of smoke and bustle, of duns and other visitors—in fact, has a particular desire to find within 40 miles of Glasgow a place which, for all practical purposes, shall be to him or to her the world’s end—let him make up his mind to spend a day on the top of that well-known yet comparatively little climbed hill, Tinto. And for this purpose let him take a return ticket and follow us to Symington—and there is Tinto, or the Hill of Fire, before his view. There can be no mistake as to what we have come out to see. There is not much to distract our attention from the object we have in view, nothing near of a like kind to compete with it. There it stands, like a large self-contained house, all others at a respectable distance from it, not to be mistaken with any other—nay, as destitute of relations as Melchisedeck, a great porphyritic hill, dominating like a king over the Upper Ward. After leaving the station, a quarter of a mile to the south, there is a camp still to be seen covering half an acre. This takes us back in thought to that old Simon Liscard, who, in the days of Malcolm the Fourth or William the Lion, got this district as a territory, and called the settlement Symon’s Town, abbreviated into Symontown, and again corrupted or improved, according to the individual taste, into Symington.
The sky becomes overcast, but we are not to be deterred by the muster of the elements, and we step out valiantly in the face of a rising wind, and also in the face of an interminable procession of rough looking cattle, feeling that there is a little credit in being “jolly,” as Mark Tapley would put it, under such circumstances. In spite of the gloomy aspect of clouds there is something hopeful in the strength of the wind, and soon they begin to draw off, and by the time we are a little on our way the old battle has been waged and won, and we are glad to take off any superfluous clothing as the sun throws off the last porous film, and looks down on us with a cheery smile. The soil here is not of the very richest. It reminds us of the saying in regard to the Carse of Gowrie, which must have had for its author some one who was foiled in his battle with the strong clay—“It greets a’ winter, and girns a’ summer.” But for all that there are some good fields of grain to be met with amidst the wide extended breadth of pasture land, and an occasional flock and herd furnish an element of life which adds to the interest.
When we find ourselves on the main road we make for a reddish small quarry on the hillside to the south of us. We reach it by a short cut past the front of the first thatched house we come to, and then turn to the left for about five minutes’ walk on the Stirling and Carlisle road. When we get to the top of the quarry there is a very good path that leads all the way to the summit. As there is no omnibus that runs to the top, we zigzag it in our own way. Now we make a false step; we are finding our way over some troublesome stones, and often a huge mass of bright flesh-coloured felstone. Like all other felstone hills, such as the Pentlands and North Berwick Law, it is worn into smooth conical eminences, usually coated with turf, which, when broken here and there along the slopes, allows a long stream of angular rubbish to crumble from the rock, and slide down the hill. We are for ever mistaking the top, thinking we are at it, when, behold, there it is, as if farther off than ever. And so on we go, up and down, over the elastic heather, enjoying the ever-widening horizon, till at last we reach the very summit, 2312 feet above the level of the sea, but not much more than 1700 feet vertically from its base. It stands on the mutual border of the parishes of Carmichael, Wiston, Symington, and Covington, and forms a sort of vanguard to the Southern Highlands. We could see parts of sixteen different counties from it, including Hartfell and Queensberry Hill in the south, Cairntable in the south-west, the peaks of Arran in the west, and the Bass Rock in the north-east.
Looking to the south and east, and not at all far away, we have hill range upon hill range. They are neither very grand, nor rugged—they might almost be termed bleak and bare; and yet they have a beauty all their own. With few exceptions they are wanting in vegetation, and although to one accustomed to the rugged grandeur and rich variety of the northern Highlands, they may seem tame and uninteresting, there is a charm in their peaceful slopes and rounded summits which is not to be found in the stern beauty of their northern neighbours. “Their beauty is not revealed at first sight; it grows on the eye, which never tires of gazing on their grassy slopes and watching the ever-changing play of light and shade.”
On a clear day the hills in the north of England, and even the north coast of Ireland, can be easily seen. We did not see them ourselves, but we have seen a man who has seen them. We could see the infant Clyde, made up of several streams, all rapid, noisy, and wildly frolicsome, differing as much from the broad, calm, useful river at Glasgow as the most capering and crowing baby differs from the gravest sage. We could see it almost from the place where it takes its rise near the sources of the Tweed and the Annan, and could follow it winding like a silver thread along the bottom of a narrow dell, down to a broad and splendid band of crystal through a diversified country, now washing the skirt of a romantically situated Roman camp, now through pleasant pastures and charming corn lands, and now skirting the base of Tinto in a sweep so great and circuitous that a distance of more than 20 miles is run between points which in a straight line are not farther apart than 7½ miles. We only lose sight of it when, after tumbling over Cora Linn, it runs down beyond Lanark into what might well be said to be at once the most beautiful and fruitful valley in Scotland.
Looking to the east in the direction of the self-important town of Biggar (who has not heard the ancient joke of the district, London’s big, but Biggar’s Biggar?), it was interesting to see the Clyde approaching in that direction within 7 miles of the Tweed. Between the two streams there lies, of course, the watershed of the country, the drainage flowing on the one side into the Atlantic, and on the other into the North Sea. And yet, instead of a range or a hill, the space between the two rivers is simply the broad, flat valley of Biggar, so little above the level of the Clyde that it would not cost much labour to send it across into the Tweed.
And there are some members, possibly of a Glasgow Angling Club, one or two of them up to the knees in the Clyde in the pursuit of what they can get, even though it should be but a nibble. No more peaceful scene could be found for one who wants to get away from the cares of his ordinary daily life. I am content merely to be a reader of Walton’s books, which are like those that Horace had in his mind when he said that to read them was a medicine against ambitions and desires.