Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1815 edition. Excerpt: ... 264 LETTER XXVI. Concerning the New Roads, #c. 173-- It is now about eight years since I sent you the conclusion of my rambling account of the Highlands; and perhaps you would not have complained, if in this long interval, you had been perfectly free of so barren a subject. Monsieur Fontenelle, I remember, in one of his pastoral dialogues makes a shepherd object to another-- Quoi! toujours del'amour? And I think you may as well ask--What! always Highlands? But in my situation, without them, I should be in the sorrowful condition of an old woman in her countrycottage by a winter-fire, and nobody would hearken to her tales of witches and spirits; that is, to have little or nothing to say. But now I am a perfect volunteer, and cannot plead my former excuses, and really am without any apprehensions of being thought officious in giving you some account of the roads, which within these few weeks have been completely finished. These new roads were begun in the year 1726, and have continued about eleven years in the prosecution; yet, long as it may be thought, if you were to pass over the whole work (for the borders of it would show you what it was), I make no doubt but that number of years would diminish in your imagination to a much shorter tract of time, by comparison with the difficulties that attended the execution. But before I proceed to any particular descriptions of them, I shall inform you how they lie, to the end you may trace them out upon a map of Scotland. And first I shall take them as they are made, to enter the Mountains, viz. One of them begins from Crief, which is about fourteen miles from Sterling. Here the Romans left off their works, of which some parts are visible to this day; particularly the camp at Ardoch, where the...
