Page:Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth (Macmillan, 1897) (IA cu31924104001478).pdf/221

 girls dressed in grey coming out of the factory, probably apprentices also.

After dinner set off towards Hamilton, but on foot, for we had to turn aside to the Cartland Rocks, and our car was to meet us on the road. A guide attended us, who might almost in size, and certainly in activity, have been compared with William’s companion who hid him- self in the niche of the cavern. His method of walking and very quick step soon excited our attention. I could hardly keep up with him; he paddled by our side, just reaching to my shoulder, like a little dog, with his long snout pushed before him—for he had an enormous nose, and walked with his head foremost. I said to him, “ How quick you walk!” he replied, “‘ Zaz was zo¢ quick walking,” and when I asked him what he called so, he said “Five miles an hour,” and then related in how many hours he had lately walked from Lanerk to Edinburgh, done some errands, and returned to Lanerk —JI have forgotten the particulars, but it was a very short time—-and added that he had an old father who could walk at the rate of four miles an hour, for twenty- four miles, any day, and had never had an hour’s sick- ness in his life. “Then,” said I, “he has not drunk much strong liquor?” ‘Yes, enough to drown him.” From his eager manner of uttering this, I inferred that he himself was a drinker; and the man who met us with the car told William that he gained a great deal of money as an errand-goer, but spent it all in tippling. He had been a shoe-maker, but could not bear the confinement on account of a weakness in his chest.

The neighbourhood of Lanerk is exceedingly pleasant ; we came to a sort of district of glens or little valleys that cleave the hills, leaving a cheerful, open country above them, with no superior hills, but an undulating surface. Our guide pointed to the situation of the Cartland Crags. We were to cross a narrow valley, and walk down on the other side, and then we should be at the spot; but the little fellow made a sharp turn down a footpath to