that joins the Forth and Clyde, it serves to shew what industry can do; and what astonishing effects a knowledge of commerce and the arts is calculated to produce. From a few scattered cottages, this, in the course of a few years, has become a populous village, where many are in the way of making princely fortunes. The canal here, which is the greatest work of the kind in Britain, was begun in the year 1750; and has already proved highly advantageous not only to the proprietors, but to the nation at large.

The width of the canal from the Forth to the Clyde is fifty feet: its length from Dalmuir Burnfoot on the Clyde, six miles below Glasgow, thirty-five miles. The canal has been extended between these opposite sides of the Island by means of twenty locks on the east side of the country, and nineteen on the west; for the tide does not ebb so low by nine feet in the Clyde as in the Forth; where it rises and falls 160 feet. The canal being from eight to nine feet deep, is capable of carrying vessels not exceeding nine feet beam, and seventy-three feet in length, as these vessels do not draw more than eight feet water. It is carried through eighteen draw-bridges, and over fifteen aqueducts of note, besides small bridges and tunnels. At Kirkintilloch it is extended over the water of Logie on an aqueduct arch, ninety feet broad. This arch was thrown over in three stretches, by means of only one centre, or wooden frame, which was shifted on small rollers. from one stretch to another: a thing never before attempted with an arch of this size, Yet the joinings are as fairly equal as any other part. It is ad

mired as a very fine piece of masonry. The aqueductbridge over the Kelvin consists of four arches, and carries the canal over the valley below at the height of sixty-five feet. To supply the canal with water, there is one reservoir of fifty acres, twenty-four feet deep, and another of seventy acres, twenty-two feet deep, which receives many rivulets and springs.

A little to the southward, and nearly parallel with the canal, the Vallum of Agricola, commonly called Graham's Dyke, is extended like a fortified glen. Thus the isthmus between the Forth and the Clyde is stamped with the most characteristic féatures of two great nations in the zenith of their prosperity. The Carron canal bespeaks the wealth, the art, and the extended views of the commercial Britons. But the Vallum even now makes a deeper impression on sense, and marks with a bolder hand the genius of the conquering Romans.

Two miles from Carron, near the junction of the Glasgow and Stirling roads, stands the celebrated village of Camelon, once a Roman town, as appears both from History and the plainest vestiges of Roman antiquity. Roman urns are dug up in every garden and field, and stones adorned with Roman sculpture are found in the doors and windows of almost every house. The isthmus between the Forth and the Clyde naturally became the principal seat, or scene of the Roman arms and colonization in what is now called Scotland, as that between Carlisle and Newcastle was in England, before the extension of the Roman frontier to the North, and after it was again contracted from the wall of Agricola to that of Adrian.

In viewing these remains of Roman conquest and

colonization, a very strong curiosity is excited of inquiring into the state or condition of our ancestors under the Roman government. We may presume that the Britons were treated by the Romans like other conquered nations, and that in fact they were so we know from history. The best lands were no doubt seized by the conquerors; great numbers of the young men sent to Italy to recruit the Roman armies; and heavy taxes both in money and kind imposed on the people or peasantry who tended the cattle or cultivated the soil. But still we are curious to know more accurately the condition of our forefathers under the Roman prefectures, municipalities, and colonies in Britain. The tenure of lands, the occupations, manner of life, habits, notions, and general condition of the Britons remain still among the desiderata literaria: though it is not every day that a genius is to be found fitted for the task; for the accomplishment of which the patient industry of the antiquarian must be united with the recollections of the man of learning, and the extensive views of the philosopher.

I next went to view the house of Kinaird, where Bruce, the famous Abyssinian traveller resided. His voluminous productions, respecting the sources of the Nile, are well known. The opinion that his travels are not authentic, but that having found, he translated and palmed a Roman Catholic Missionary's journal on the public as his own, I believe to be wholly groundless. Perhaps this report may have arisen from this circumstance, that when Mr. Bruce was introduced to his Majesty, it was found that he was a very bad drawer. Indeed he could scarcely

At

draw at all, though the elegant drawings in his book, were given out as the productions of his pencil. any rate Mr. Park, who has travelled through a great part of Africa already, who is now on his travels to the interior of that vast continent a second time, and with whom I have the honour to be acquainted, is of opinion that Bruce's narration is true, and says that the manners of the Abyssinians, however beastly they appear in some points of view, differ but little from some of the African tribes near Tambouchtou, that he has visited.

Mr. Park, who is only about twenty-eight or thirty years of age, has travelled through a considerable part of Africa at the expense of the African Society in London, who support his wife and family in his absence, and have settled a handsome annuity on her, in the case of his death, is extremely intelligent, as well as enterprising. He has an uncommon facility in acquiring languages; and as he shoots well, and proposes shooting with water, sand, or any thing, which is easily done by putting a little grease or tallow between the powder and the water, he has no doubt, with his gun, of being able to kill beasts or bring down fowls enough, if nothing else can be got on which to subsist, though he should for weeks or months meet with no human being in this extensive and uninhabited country, which sometimes happens. And, to prevent being attacked by beasts in the night, as they are afraid of fire more than any thing else, he proposes always kindling one, and calculating matters so that it shall not go out, while he is asleep. Under Providence he trusts solely to his gun, and is not afraid of any thing but that while

he is asleep it may be broken or stolen by the savages. Were this to happen, which he trusts will not be the case, he must return. He left London lately; and though all that have set out in the same route have either died or never been heard of, yet he is not afraid.

As Wallace Tree, at Torwood, was but a few miles L distant from Kinaird House, I went to see it. This tree, now reduced to a stump, was so old and hollow even in the days of Sir William Wallace, and so large that it seems, he and twelve men could dine within it. This to some will appear incredible; but will they call the veracity of the author of Cook's Voyages in question? He assures us that, at Nootka Sound, on the western side of North America, he saw trees 60 feet in circumference, and the trunks below the branches from 50 to 60 feet high.

From Torwood I directed my course to Bannockburn, where the famous victory was gained in the year 1314, by Robert Bruce, King of Scotland, over Edward II. King of England. Upon inquiry I found that a few years ago, upon digging in the moss bordering on the Muir, the bones of a man, sitting on horseback, with his accoutrements, were found but little decayed. And this seems not improbable, since there is something in Moss that preserves bodies longer than any other known material. Some are of opinion that the logs of wood, which are even at this day found in them entire, have been in that state ever since Noah's flood.

The church of St. Ninians, which contained the rebel army's powder, &c. in the year 1745, and which was blown up, next attracted my notice,