Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/132

114 sloping on each side of the High-street, continuing to the flat ground, or more properly the trench, at the foot of the mountain. Many of the houses in the High-street have, from their sloping situation, three or four stories more at the back part of them, than in front. The houses, in general, in the old town, are very high; some in the High-street have fourteen or more stories, or, as they are termed in Scotland, flats. Each flat contains a family, and is completely shut up from the staircase. There is but one staircase leading to all the flats in the house; and it may easily be imagined in what condition this common, cork-screw, stone staircase, must always be. There is but a very small winding flat space or trench, between the low parts of the town, around the Abbey, and the sharp rise of Salisbury Crags, Arthur's Seat, and Calton Hill; so that the situation of Edinburgh, setting aside the prospects from it, is unique; for it is built upon an infinity of irregularities of a huge rock, sloping to flat ground on one side, and on the other to a trench, whence quickly rise prodigious mountains.

The violent gusts of wind, continually to be felt in the streets of Edinburgh are, I imagine,