AND THE VALE OF THE ESK. 743
bridge some hundred yards lower down the Esk, was, until modern times, the
only means of transit across the river there.
If you would follow the Esk to the very end, you must proceed along the
left bank under the trees, and turn leftwards away from the town to the
sea-shore, where the little river widens out in its shallow bed and glides almost
imperceptibly into the waters of the Forth. A few black crows stalk and
peck at the water edge ; a Aock of white sea-gulls flutter in the air. Freshwater
plants grow on the moist ground, and mussel-shells innumerable are
mingled with the stones upon the beach. Out on the Forth gleam the white
walls of Inchkeith lighthouse, and there is a white sail in the distance.
We have seen the Esk a ‘ burnie’ and a stream : going briskIy over
stones, and sleeping sulkily in pools; clear from the hills, and brown and
foaming from the mill-wheel. We have seen it winding under the stately
walls of Roslin, through the ‘ woody Iabyrinth’ of Hawthornden, and among
the sunlit deer-parks’of;Dalkeith. And now, as it loses itself in the Forth,
we will bid it adieu.
