If you don’t care about bustling, busy Glasgow, with its smoke and its dirt, bonnie Edinburgh is distant only sixty-five minutes by express trains of the Caledonian railway, one of the best built and best equipped roads in Great Britain.
It hasn’t the commerce of Glasgow, not being a seaport, but it is the cleanest city I ever visited, and one of the most beautiful. Many travellers consider London the most interesting city in the world, but to a casual observer, the four most attractive cities in Europe are Rome, Paris, Brussels and Edinburgh.
The whole city is built of granite and freestone. You don’t see a brick excepting in a very few and very tall factory chimneys. To some eyes this is monotonous; to mine it is pleasing. It looks, and it is, substantial, solid and strong.
Don’t come at any time, not even in August, without winter clothing. The winds are keen and cutting. Umbrella and “waterproof” are indispensable; overshoes, also, if it is your habit to wear them, for “the rain it raineth every day”—so to speak. This is not the remark of a hasty tourist. I have been making trips to Scotland for the past twenty years and I have stayed there for weeks at a time.
It is cool here and rain is frequent, but everything in this life has its compensation. This is the twentieth day of August, 1891, and we have strawberries for breakfast every morning and fresh green peas are in season. Large, luscious strawberries and raspberries sixpence a quart. Edinburgh, remember, is four hundred miles north of London. The twilight is long and late, I was reading a badly-printed Scotch newspaper this evening by daylight at half-past eight.
Labor is cheap here, and yet boys do men’s work, such as driving carts and sweeping the streets.
The drives in and about Edinburgh are very attractive, and there are no better roads anywhere.
There are tram-cars in the city: fare, inside, two pence; “on top,” one penny. There are also two lines of cable cars.
In a “distillery agent’s” window, in Princes street, I saw flasks of wine marked “two shillings.” I stepped in and bought a flask. “One penny more,” remarked the salesman. “For what,” said I, inquiringly. “For the cork.” When I reached my hotel I applied a corkscrew; it wouldn’t budge. The penny “cork” was a glass stopper with a “worm,” to screw on and off.
It strikes a stranger as rather odd to see men and boys carry so much on their heads and to see them balance their loads with such nicety. Instead of using small, light push carts, or delivering goods in baskets hanging on the arm, as is done in New York, Edinburgh boys use a tray or flat board with an edge turned up, in which they carry vegetables, meat, poultry, fruit, etc. This tray is placed on the head and is scarcely ever touched by the hand except to load or unload. The head in Edinburgh is made to do good physical service.