The old Glasgow road, that goes up from Moffat past Meikleholmside, and so across Ericstane Muir, is everything a road should not be. It is steep, narrow, exposed, and rugged, and, except as an object-lesson in what our ancestors had to put up with, is a very undesirable route and one in which no one would wish to find himself. It has not even the merit of being picturesque.

The road that Telford made continues onward from Beattock in more suave fashion. It follows the glen of Evan Water for nine miles, and the three of them—road, river, and Caledonian Railway—go amicably side by side under the hills, to Beattock Summit and down to Elvanfoot, where the Elvanfoot Inn of other days now stands as a shooting-lodge.

Elvanfoot Bridge, that carries the road over the Evan (i.e. Avon) Water, looks down upon a pretty scene of rushing stream, boulders, and ferns, or “furruns,” as a Scotsman would enunciate the word.

It was here, late on the tempestuous and rainy night of October 25th, 1808, that the most terrifying and dramatic accident of any that ever befell the mail coaches occurred. It is not without due thought and choice of words that we have called it dramatic, for the happening was precisely of that thrilling spectacular character cherished by theatrical managers whose public demands sensation.

The Evan Water was in flood this black and boisterous night, and, raving in its stony bed, tore furiously at the newly rebuilt bridge that spanned the torrent. Down through the wild obscurity from the heights above Douglas Mill came the mail from Glasgow for Carlisle, and no sooner did the horses place foot upon the bridge than it collapsed, as suddenly and completely as any stage property. It was near ten o’clock, the insides had composed themselves to that semblance of sleep which coach travellers could command, and the outsides had wrapped themselves up in their greatcoats, and had so fixed their minds upon more pleasant circumstances than riding in the rain on a cold October night, that they were practically oblivious of their surroundings, when they were suddenly plunged, with the coach, coachman, horses, and guard, into the foaming water underneath the broken arch. There were two outside passengers: one a City merchant named Lund, the other a Mr. Brand of Ecclefechan. Both were instantly killed. The four insides, a lady and three gentlemen, were more fortunate, and escaped with bruises and a fright. The horses suffered severely, the leaders being killed in falling, and one of the wheelers crushed to death, as it lay below, by falling stones from the crumbling arch. The coach and harness were utterly destroyed, and Alexander Cooper, the coachman, although found protected from being washed away by two huge boulders, only survived by a few weeks the injuries his spine had received. The guard, Thomas Kingham, was found with his head cut open, but soon recovered. He always considered his escape from being killed was due to his not having strapped himself into his seat on that fatal night, so that, instead of being involved with the coach, he was shot clear of it, into the water.

It was due to the presence of mind shown by the lady passenger that the down mail, at that moment due to pass this tragical spot, did not meet the fate that had already overtaken this unfortunate coach. She had found a temporary refuge on a friendly rock rising amidst the surging water, and crouching there, saw the lamps of the oncoming coach glaring through the mist and rain. Shrieking at the highest pitch of her voice, she fortunately attracted the attention of the coachman, who drew up on the very verge of destruction.

The first care of the guard belonging to the new arrival was to rescue this lady from her position. Hugh Campbell was not like the conventional heroes of the theatre, who make nothing of grasping the heroine round the waist, and, striking an attitude, so removing her to a place of safety with an air suggesting a whimsical combination of a Chesterfield and a bold bad bandit. No, he set about the task with a modest diffidence which somewhat exasperated the lady herself. Climbing down with the broken reins lashed together, so that those above could haul her up, he asked doubtfully, “Whaur will I grip her?”

“Grip me whaur ye like,” said she, “but grip me sicker”; and he accordingly tied her up securely and she was hoisted to the road above, without more ado.

The down mail returned to Moffat with a heavy and mournful load, including the dead and injured passengers of the up coach. The only uninjured horse was led behind.

For many years the bridge was not properly mended, funds being scarce on these roads; and the mail, slowing for it, lost five minutes on every journey. The part that fell may still be traced by the shorter lime stalactites hanging from the repaired arch. It is still known as “Broken Bridge,” in addition to “Milestone Brig,” from the milestone on it, marking the midway distance between Carlisle and Glasgow: “Carlisle 47½ miles. Glasgow 47 miles.”

The Caledonian Railway, approaching this scene, crosses the Evan Water on a bridge which looks as though a Norman consulting architect had been raised from the dead to design. It passes in a shallow cutting over a scrubby moor, protected against being embedded in winter’s snows by a close palisade of timber on either side.

The road now, with Crawford in the distance, sharply bends, and crosses the infant Clyde at New Bridge.

Crawford, situated in a wide strath, or green vale, where several streams join the Clyde, is a scattered village whose white houses show pleasantly at great distances. It is a favourite place among the wealthier Glasgow folk who like rural holidays. The New Crawford Inn of coaching days, a substantial, mansion-like building, opened in 1822, on the completion of this portion of Telford’s new road, is still in business as the “Cranstoun Hotel.” The old road, from Elvanfoot, goes straighter than the new one to Abington, but with severe gradients; while the new continues its even way alongside the river, to Abington, where it bids good-bye to the Clyde altogether, until Bothwell is reached.

Abington is a typical Scottish anglers’ resort: just a tiny place with an inn, a post-office, a few cottages, and a fine park or two; very neat, very still, and looking very expensive and exclusive. A gamekeeper, or an angler in waders, with rod and creel, are almost the only figures seen here, in the road.

Beyond Abington, the river and the rail alike turn aside and leave the road to solitude. Not even Telford’s road-engineering genius could abolish the ghastly pull-up over the bleak and beastly moor that stretches between this point and Douglas Mill. You deceptively descend to it, to Denighton Bridge, crossing a little stream that comes down the valley from Crawfordjohn, but then rise to an exposed lonely plateau, bleaker than Shap and without its interest. Down at Denighton Bridge, where the view ranges along the gloomy valley wherein the Covenanters skulked and the troopers of Montrose hunted them, the sheep graze and the lambkins frisk in spring. Even a wet and cold cyclist (who is not easily amused) must shriek with laughter at the antics of the lambs, which are a good deal funnier than those of any low comedian I have ever seen. No need to encore them either, for they continue all day, or at least until, exhausted with laughter, you depart, to face the muir above.

Heaven send the traveller who travels here by his own efforts has fine weather and a following wind, otherwise his progress is slow martyrdom along eight miles of shivery loneliness, and thrice welcome is the longed-for descent to Douglas Mill.

The Douglas Water runs in a deep and beautifully wooded valley at Douglas Mill, where the wayside Douglas Mill Inn stood in the coaching era, and where, behind an imposing gravelled sweep, the entrance to the beautiful park of the Earl of Home is seen. For five miles another stretch of old road goes to the right, across Broken Cross Muir, as far as Lesmahagow: the new road pursuing an eventful course, past the Newfield Inn.

Lesmahagow, i.e. the Court, or Place, of Mahego, an early Gaelic saint, was once the site of an Abbey. It is now a small, but prosperous, town, looking very new and neat, in spite of the fact that it is situated on the edge of the Lanark coal-field. The traveller who pursues a dogged way along the road, and looks to neither right nor left, will know nothing of Lesmahagow, which lies slightly to the left hand; and I am sure he will not miss much. But, in the crossing of old and new roads here, at the bridging of the little river Nethan, and with the railway passing near by, a singular complexity of ways is produced.

From this point, on to the very outskirts of Glasgow, the great industrial districts of Lanark display their activities before the traveller in no uncertain manner. Passing Blackwood, the centre of the colliery district is reached at Larkhall, and miners, going to and from work, are the chief wayfarers. The coal of the Lanarkshire pits is of an inferior kind, and by no means well-suited for domestic use, burning dull, and apt to fly in explosive red-hot embers on to carpets and hearth-rugs. But it is not a gassy coal, and the miners are able to go to their work with naked lights. Hence the little oil-lamp which, strung to his cap, is the mark of every Lanark coal-getter.

Hamilton, the capital of all this district, is a very considerable town, and an odd mixture of ducal dignity and striving industrialism. It stands at the gates of the Duke of Hamilton’s great park, and jostles that dignified place in a way that would make the hermit Dukes of Bedford faint with horror. But the Dukes of Hamilton, who are Douglases, and of much more distinguished lineage than the Russells, do not seem greatly to suffer from this contact with the world: although, to be sure, the magnificent Alexander, tenth Duke, found the old streets of the town so close to his residence that the colliers and the weavers of the place could easily observe his domestic affairs. This was too much, not merely for a Duke: even so comparatively grovelling a thing as an ordinary squire would have refused to put up with it: and so the too-neighbourly street, and even the old Tolbooth, were purchased. The Tolbooth stands, even now, in the park, and the front walls of the otherwise demolished houses, with doors and windows filled up, form an odd boundary-wall.

The tenth Duke was magnificent indeed. He knew what was due to his strawberry-leaves, and, being a man of immense wealth, saw that he got his due accordingly. A great deal is possible to a man with eighteen titles and five residences, and millions of money to properly support them. He added expensively to the Palace in 1828 and not only beautified it and filled it with wonderful collections of art and literature, but expended £130,000 on a grand mausoleum, so that he might be adequately housed in death. He even imported the black marble sarcophagus of an ancient Egyptian monarch; who, however, appears to have been of shorter stature than the princely Duke Alexander, for the thing was a misfit, and when at length his Grace was gathered to his fathers, his body had to be doubled up, in a very derogatory way. The immense collections in Hamilton Palace were at length sold in 1882, by an extravagant and impecunious successor of Duke Alexander, and realised £400,000 at auction.

The park and the mausoleum may be seen at due seasons, and sometimes the miniature castle of ChÂtelherault, built in 1732, in imitation of the castle in France whence the Dukes of Hamilton take their French title of Dukes of ChÂtelherault.

Hamilton town is a cheery place, with colour and ornament in its new buildings: very different from the lowering streets of Glasgow, which we are now nearing. In its present prosperous condition, many old buildings are being removed, but the passer-by will note a quaint tablet over an old house in the chief street, with three moustached lions’ heads, the initials “A. S.” and the inscription:

A very broad and well-kept stretch of road leads from Hamilton to the Clyde at Bothwell Bridge: the famous Brig where the battle so immediately disastrous to the Covenanters was fought, June 22nd, 1679. The bridge representing the one that spanned the river so long ago was built in 1826, and neither it nor the road resembles the old circumstances of the place in any but the remotest degree. The road across Bothwell Brig when the battle was fought was steep and but twelve feet wide. The Covenanters lost the day entirely through the internal dissensions among their own forces. Each officer wanted to be commandant, and while they were bitterly wrangling about this point, up came the Royalist forces under the Duke of Monmouth and “bloody Claverse,” otherwise Graham of Claverhouse, the “bonnie Dundee” of the famous ballad. The Covenanting army was well placed for defence, and the day might, in other circumstances, have gone in their favour, but as it was, they were defeated, with a slaughter of three hundred. Twelve hundred prisoners were taken. Of these, some were executed: many were shipped to the plantations in Barbadoes. Thus was avenged the initial Royalist defeat by the hands of the Covenanters at Drumclog, on the 1st of June.

It was not until 1903 that the tall obelisk now standing the north side of the bridge was erected, to commemorate the Covenanters who fought and fell “in defence of civil and religious liberty, for Christ’s Crown and Covenant.”

The red ruins of the ancient castle of Bothwell stand in the neighbouring park belonging to the Earl of Home. The little town of Bothwell, with its finely rebuilt church, fringes the road: in the churchyard a highly decorative monument of terra-cotta and mosaics to the memory of Joanna Baillie, the poet, with quotations in praise of the scenery around Bothwell. The scenery is still (what is left of it) fine, but since the day when Joanna Baillie wandered in Bothwell’s braes, and corresponded with Sir Walter Scott, the suburbs of Glasgow have swept over the scene; and henceforward the way to Glasgow is not rural.

Yet although Glasgow is, in its population, the “second city of the Empire,” coming next after London, it is by no means the centre of so great a number of smaller townships as Manchester, and by consequence the approach, along crowded streets to the centre of the city, is not so lengthy. Bothwell, at the very furthest, is the limit, and is nine miles from the Exchange at Glasgow. Laurel Bank and the suburb of Uddingston follow, and to this fringe in these days the electric tramways extend. To these marches of the city succeed Broomhouse and some busy outlying collieries of the Lanarkshire coal-fields, Mount Vernon railway station, and Tolcross. It was at the approach to Tolcross, soon after the mail-coach to London had been established, that a desperate attempt to wreck and rob the mail was made. The road at that time passed through a small fir wood, where a strong rope was stretched across the highway and securely fastened at either end to tree-trunks, at the height of the places usually occupied by coachman and guard; but, as it happened, a slow-moving hay-waggon came along first, instead of the more quickly moving van, and the waggoner got rather a surprise.