82 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [North Loch.
whose windows perhaps the accident occurred
?that the fox will not set his foot on the ict
after Candlenias, especially in the heat of the sun
as this was, at two o?clock; and at any time tht
fox is so sagacious as to lay his ear on the icf
to see if it be frozen to the bottom, or if he heal
the murmuring and current of the water.?
In I 7 I 5, when the magistrates took measures foi
the defence of the city, the sluice of the loch was
completely dammed up to let the water rise, a pre.
caution omitted by their successors in 1745. Ir
Edgar?s plan, twenty years later, the bed of thc
loch is shown as ?? now devised,? measuring 1,70c
feet in length, from the foot of Xamsay Garden tc
the foot of Halkerston?s Wynd, and 400 feet broad
at the foot of the gardens below the Advocate?s
Close. From the upper point to the West Church
the bed is shown as ?bog or marsh.?
? Yet many in common with myself,? says
Chambers, ?must remember the by no means
distant time when the remains of this sheet oi
water, consisting of a few pools, served as an ex.
cellent sliding and skating ground in winter, while
their neglected, grass-grown precincts too fre
quently formed an arena whereon the high and
mighty quarrels of the Old and New Town cowZie3
were brought to lapidarian arbitration j ? and until
a very recent period woodcocks, snipe, and waterducks
used to frequent the lower part of the West
Princes Street Gardens, attracted by the damp oi
the locality.
?? The site of the North Loch,? says a writer in
the Edinburgh Magazine for 1790, ?is disgusting
below as well as above the bridge, and the balus
trades of the east side ought to be filled up like
those of the west, as they are only meant to show
a beautiful stream, not slaughter-houses.?
The statute for the improvement of the valley
westward of the mound was not passed until 1816 ;
but Lord Cockburn describes it as being then an
impassable fetid marsh, ?open on all sides, the
Teceptacle of many sewers, and seemingly of all the
worried cats, drowned dogs, and blackguardism of
the city, Its abomination made it so solitary that
the volunteers used to practise ball-firing across it.
The men stood on its north side, and the targets
were set up along the lower edge of the castle
hiil, or rock. The only difficulty was in getting
across the swamp to place and examine the targets,
which could only be done in very dry weather and
at one or two places.?
In the maps of 1798 a ?new mound? would
seem to have been projected across it, at an angle,
from South Castle Street to the Ferry Road, by
the western base of the castle rock-a design, fortunately,
never carried out. One of the greatest
mistakes committed as a matter of taste was the
erection of the Earthen Mound across the beautiful
valley of the loch, from the end of Hanover
Street to a point at the west end of Bank Street.
It is simply an elongated hill, like a huge railway
embankment, a clumsy, enormous, and unreniovzble
substitute for a bridge which should have been
there, and its creation has been deplored by every
topographical writer on Edinburgh.
Huge as the mass is, it originated in a very
accidental operation. When the bed of the loch
was in a state of marsh, a shopkeeper, Mr. George
Boyd, clothier, at Gosford?s Close, in the old town,
was frequently led from business or curiosity to
visit the rising buildings of the new, and accommodated
himself with ?? steps ? across this marsh,
and he was followed in the construction of this
path by other persons similarly situated, who contributed
their quota of stone or plank to fill up,
widen, and heighten what, in rude compliment to
the founder, was becoming known as ?Geordie
Boyd?s Mud Brig.? The inconvenience arising
from the want of a direct communication between
the old town and the new began to be seriously
felt about 1781, when the latter had been built as
far west as Hanover Street.
Hence a number of residents, chiefly near the
Lawnmarket, held a meeting in a small publichouse,
kept by a man called Robert nunn, and
called in burlesque, ?Dunn?s Hotel,? after a
lashionable hotel of that name in Princes Street,
and subscriptions were opened to effect a communication
of some kind ; but few were required,
zs Provost Grieve, who resided at the corner of
Hanover Street, in order to fill up a quarry before
his house, obtained leave to have the rubbish from
the foundations of the various new streets laid
down there. From that time the progress of the
Mound proceeded with iapidity, and from 1781
till 1830 augmentations to its breadth and height
were continually made, till it became the mighty
mass it is. By the latter date the Mound had bezome
levelled and macadamised, its sides sown
with grass, and in various ways embellished so as to
issume the appearance of being completed. It is
ipwards of 800 feet in length, on the north upwards
if 60 feet in height, and on the south about IOO feet.
[ts breadth is proportionally much greater than its
ieight, averaging about 300 feet. It is computed
:o contain more than z,ooo,ooo of cartloads of
ravelled edrth, and on the moderate supposition
:hat each load, if paid for, was worth Gd., must
iave cost the large sum of ~ 5 0 , 0 0 0 .
It was first enclosed by rough stone walls, and
