V rflow or lichen. Another pull-up over a unded knob thickly covered with scrub, and lacier Point was reached-misleading name, for there are no glaciers now in sight, though traces of their former presence are evident enough. But this height, fringed with tall dark pines which seemed mere bushes in the valley below, affords a superb and expansive view of the granite plateau, and of the three clefts, or cañons, with which the main Yosemite valley terminates. On the left it projects into the Large Yosemite, and we can look over the diminished snowfields of Mount Hoffman, 10,600 feet above the sea, which feed the Yosemite Creek, now visible as a broad stream of water. Its descent is traced to the granite ledge whence it plunges 2,600 feet in the three beautiful falls of the Yosemite-the true proportions and grace of which are well realised from this point, immediately opposite, 2,800 feet above them, but really over two miles distant. The bare granite knob of the North Dome and the peak of Mount Watkins belong to the Mount Hoffman plateau, the right slopes of which are drained by the Tenaya Creek, which issues from a green lake of the same name, forms a series of lakelets on the summit of the plateau, and subsequently flows through the minor cleft of the Tenaya Fork and expands in Mirror Lake, a veritable handglass as it lay pictured below surrounded by arches, dome, and continuous wall of precipice. The verandah of the Glacier Point Lunch House directly faces the most wonderful feature of the valley, the absolutely vertical section-as clear-cut as the seeming edge of the crescent moon-the unscaled summit of the Half Dome. From here also we can look down into the valley of the Little Yosemite, the central cañon, and across at the two beautiful falls of the main Merced river, which altogether descends 2,000 feet in two miles in its course from the high plateau, first in a twisted mass 600 feet of the Nevada Fall, and a little farther down falling 400 feet in the broad rippling foam masses of the Vernal. Still more to the right is the curving opening of the Ililloutte cañon, over the walls of which the Ililloutte Creek plunges 600 feet, a beautiful perpendicular fall which we had noticed on the tract to Mirror Lake, and above which the cañon closes up abruptly.

But there was more in prospect; and, remounting,

Our ial guide led up the trail through a belt of sha ines and undergrowth of raspberry canes towa Sentinel Dome, which lies half a mile north-east of Glacier Point, a thousand feet higher, and, standing back from the valley walls, had shut out the view in the rear. Soon the region of vegetation and black-leaved pines was passed, and, tying the horses to a solitary weather-beaten stump, we scrambled up the steep concentric layers of smooth, bare granite, the summit of which, more than eight thousand feet above the sea, affords a gloriously expansive view of the dark, serrated peaks of Mounts McClure and Lyell, of the Mount Lyell group, with Mount Clark, named in honour of our guide, of the snowcovered Merced group, and the bare, rounded knob of Mount Star King in the immediate foreground.

Far, far away stretch the peaks of Mounts Conness and Dana and others of the High Sierra, from thirteen to fifteen thousand feet high. The view of the three Yosemite cañons is indeed sublime, and the vertical walls of the Half Dome, which rears its singular crest five hundred feet higher than our standpoint, loom out most impressively. Snow lies here and there in detached masses, but. there is no particle of vegetation. All is bare and smooth, sloping up to the serrated crests of the distant Sierras. There are no glaciers, but evidence of their presence and work in former times is abundant in the smooth, rounded appearance of the subordinate knolls of the Mount Hoffman plateau, as well as in the small moraines in the valley beneath.

Here, and here only, are the true proportions of the Yosemite realised, and it is seen to be a narrow cleft in the great glacier-smoothed and snow-patched plateau. In homely words, we seem to stand on the top of a vast piecrust, of which the domes and summits are the ornaments, the valley representing a portion cut away, and a very clear cut it is, leaving the walls vertical. It is an astounding phenomenon, and one for which neither erosion by water, fissure, nor even glaciers a thousand feet thick and a mile and a half wide, can wholly account. In default of other equally valid theories as to the origin of the valley, that promulgated by Professor Whitney must be accepted at present. According to his belief the valley was rent in the granite plateau, possibly at the period of the elevation of the Sierras, when the undercrust had not solidified, and that the abyss thus created by the falling away of the undercrust swallowed up the débris. For the small amount now visible is of recent accumulation, resulting from the disintegration of the present walls, the existing bottom of the valley and lines of drainage being comparatively modern features.

We walked most of the way down the steep descent into the valley. It is barely five miles up to the summit, but even moderate exertion tells on pedestrians unacclimatised to the rarefied air. But none should miss the view from the Sentinel Dome, and a further trip up Cloud's Rest, equally accessible, will give a close view of the Vernal and Nevada Falls and of the opposite features of the Yosemite walls and beyond. Hotel rates are three dollars a day in the valley, and an extra dollar for trail tolls would cover all expenses, for horses and guides would be unnecessary for those who have time to become acclimatised and to visit all the points on foot. With Professor J. D. Whitney's scholarly and interesting pocket guide, another edition of which is much needed, and Clarence King's delightful "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada," to enthuse and direct a month's trip in and around the Yosemite, would be too brief a holiday. It would form a good preparation for an expedition to the High Sierras, year by year becoming more practicable, the delights of which can be but faintly realised even from the loftiest summits of the Yosemite walls.

The valley looked very beautiful through the delicate morning haze as our coach, slowly ascended the Mariposa trail. Round the base of

Sympathetic neighbours offered their horses and their help, and once more a party went out to search for Daniel Gilmour, much as they had searched for him on the misty morning of his disappearance.

It was a long and fatiguing journey. On reaching the town of Azul, Mr. Gilmour, the negro, and another companion resolved to pause a day or two and rest the horses. While there Mr. Gilmour was strongly advised not to attempt the further journey on horseback. He was warned that winter was approaching, that the animals would be sure to fail him, owing to the scarcity of pasture, and that he would be in great danger of encountering Indian marauders, in whose hands. a wearied and enfeebled party would have little chance. The alternative suggested to him, was to leave his horses and attendants in the town, and to proceed himself by the diligence, or coach, which was just starting for the very point he wished to reach. On the other hand, the negro's counsel was at all risks to push on as they were. But Mr. Gilmour, much to his subsequent regret, listened to the advice of his fellow-countrymen. He took the coach. It proceeded satisfactorily for one day's journey, during which an incident Occurred which must have filled Mr. Gilmour with the liveliest anticipations of approaching success. At one of the stations he observed an old officer looking at him with some interest, and evidently making observations concerning him to one of the officials. He found that the officer had been asking the man how he came to have a soldier of the line in his coach disguised as a civilian. The man had answered that this was no soldier of the line, but a Mr. Gilmour travelling on his own business. The coach had rolled on and the military man had gone his way, thinking, like the stranger in the streets of Buenos Ayres, that he had made a mistake!

On the second day's journey out of Azul towards the frontier a dire misfortune overtook the travellers. The coach utterly broke down, leaving the passengers with no alternative but to mount the coach-horses and return to town. On the road back the animal which Mr. Gilmour had mounted fell, and one of Mr. Gilmour's legs was severely fractured. With great difficulty he was carried into Azul, where he remained a helpless invalid for fully two months. Even at the end of that period he was little fit to continue a journey so fraught with uncertainty and peril, and it was deemed expedient that he should return home, which accordingly he did, but not before he had sent out to the frontier, by later and luckier diligences, full inquiries, which only brought back the information that the soldiers formerly stationed over the ditchers had recently shifted quarters a long way farther south, and that there was certainly no one in the neighbourhood now who answered to the description he had sent.

Once more the Gilmour family settled down, probably saying to each other that they would do well to abstain from pursuing a quest which seemed likely to cost them more instead of restoring what they had already lost. Still, they had now got one clue. Rightly or wrongly, it

66

was for a soldier in the line they were searching, and he was certainly more within the grasp of inquiry than a nameless, homeless wanderer of the camps." The Gilmours had influential friends with military connections. By their aid a photograph of Mr. Robert Gilmour and a detailed account of the whole matter was forwarded to the army headquarters.

Old Mrs. Gilmour herself waited upon the commander of a contingent just returned from the frontier. She told her story, but he assured her that no such person as she described was among his men now. He suspected that the negro's narrative was a pure fabrication, based, like that of so many "claimants," on the fact of the Gilmours' misfortune. Still he was anxious to do everything in his power to satisfy the old lady. He called his men out, formed them into line, and allowed her and the friend who accompanied her to examine their countenances, one by one, to see if they could detect any family likeness. We can imagine the beating of the mother's heart, but, with the characteristic dry humour of her race, she could remark that "The men maun ha' wondered what the twa auld women were wantin', walking up an' doon an' glowering i' their faces." She could see nothing which she could even imagine to be a family resemblance, and before she went away the captain, while assuring her that he would be always ready to do anything he could to help her, warned her that, even admitting the truth of the negro's story, her son might since have fallen in some of the severe frontier skirmishes which had recently taken place between the troops and the Indians.

The next news which the family heard was that a man answering the description they had issued had been seen near Bahia Blanca, and that he reported himself as having once been a soldier on the frontier. But this rumour reached them through a person of so disreputable a character that they utterly disregarded it, doubtless feeling that their bereavement was in danger of making them a prey to storytellers and adventurers of the worst description.

But not long after, another story came from Bahia Blanca, and this one was promulgated by an entirely trustworthy person, a Mr. Thomas Nicholson, manager of one of the largest estancias in the country. He narrated that during one of his visits to the town he had had occasion to enter a store where some acquaintances of his were congregated, together with a few strangers. One would like to know what it was that directed their conversation into the channel where it presently flowed. That group of rough, hardy men, most of them from far countries, began talking about their fathers and mothers and the memories of their early days. One said that his parents were dead; another that it was so long since he had heard of his that he could not tell whether they were still living. Suddenly one interrupted these half-regretful, wholly-pathetic reminiscences by a hint of a wilder romance than what lay beneath most of the stories of human recklessness and folly, of hard necessity, or bitter loneliness. He said he did not know who his father

and mother were; he had been stolen away on a foggy morning while he was minding sheep. Sometimes he thought he could remember a man and a woman and two children, but he could hardly tell whether even this might not be fancy.

Now Mr. Nicholson had heard of the Gilmour tragedy, and he had seen some members of the family. Looking carefully at the stranger, he thought he could trace some Gilmour lineaments. So he improved his acquaintance with the man, whom he found to be of good character but quite uneducated. If he had ever known English he had totally forgotten it, speaking only the Spanish patois. Nevertheless, as Mr. Nicholson got to know more of his past history, he found that it tallied with the Gilmour story, and with the later reports of the negro from the frontier. So he deemed it advisable, while keeping his eye on the man, to communicate with the Gilmours.

The man called himself José Ignatio Gonzales. This was the name of the man who had disappeared at the same time as little Daniel Gilmour, and who had been always suspected of his abduction. His account of himself was that when he was taken away his captor led his horse beside his own for one day, then let it loose, and took him before him on his own, and went on night and day towards the Upper Provinces. During the journey he was half starved and frequently beaten. He said he knew he spoke another language at that time, but whenever he used a word of it he was whipped, so that he soon discontinued and forgot it. For eight years he lived a life of literal slavery in the hands of the man Gonzales, who generally passed as his father. At this time, however, he was killed in a tavern brawl, and his unfortunate victim recalled that he had heard the news with a sensation of intense relief. But he did not long enjoy his personal freedom. Being then about sixteen years of age, he was pounced upon by the army commission. His previous hard experiences made his life in the army seem easy and pleasant, and he remained a soldier of the line for fourteen years, and it was perfectly true that he had been among the troops on guard at the frontier works.

It appeared that if Mr. Robert Gilmour had persevered in following his negro guide's advice, and had not stopped at Azul and changed his course of travelling for one which proved abortive, he would then have found his brother exactly where the negro had indicated. As it was, however, seemingly actually while Robert Gilmour lay at Azul, interrupted and invalided, the Indians made one of their great raids on the frontier territory, and the company to which the lost brother belonged was sent in pursuit of them. They overtook them, carrying off much cattle. There was a fight, and many Indians were killed. Again, the sudden fog, which had already played so direful a part in this history, fell upon the scene. The lost brother and another soldier were separated from their comrades, and presently found themselves surrounded by a party of Indians infuriated by their defeat and by the slaughter of their brethren. The other soldier was speedily dispatched, but the lost brother was reserved for

cruel, mocking torture, under which he at last succumbed, and fell to the ground as dead, bearing on his body upwards of thirty wounds.

When the fog cleared off the company came back to search for the missing soldiers. They found both, as they believed, dead. They buried the one where he lay, dug another hole for the other beside him, and went off to fetch the body, which was at some little distance from the spot. where they had made the grave. They threw it over the back of a horse, the legs dangling at one side, the head at the other. Probably the rush of blood to the head caused by this position did something towards exciting those signs of life which presently arrested their attention. Further examination convinced them that in this instance they had not to deal with a dead man, and they carried him to the nearest house, one of their own fortifications. There, to the astonishment of all, he gradually recovered. For two months -possibly the same two months that his brother lay sick and maimed at Azul-he continued more helpless than a child. When he did recover, it was with a ruined constitution. He got his discharge from the army, and fell into the hands of good people. How much goodness there is in the world, in most unlikely places, only seen and only acknowledged by God! They nursed him back into the best health possible to him, and then found him employment among themselves. We may add that these good Samaritans were Basques-that is, emigrants from the Pyrenean provinces. These Basques are always reported by experienced South American settlers to be among the most desirable population of the country-honest, sober folk, good workers, and kindly neighbours.

When at last Mr. Nicholson told José Ignatio Gonzales that he was sure he was the lost Daniel Gilmour, and that the rest of the Gilmour family were also convinced of the fact, and were only waiting to welcome and receive him, the lost brother became the prey of strange 'emotions. Those bitter years had left their stamp upon him. How could he, a half-barbarian, make a fit place for himself in a civilised Scottish family? Doubtless there had been many longings in his heart all those years, but now in the hour of their fruition he felt that they were for something which might have been, but could not yet be.

In

He went back to his childhood's home. Two gentlemen-a relative and a friend-went to fetch him. The old father and mother were watching at the door, and recognised him as he came up the street. The three met in silent tears. that moment of strong emotion there was no need for words. It was well, for the mystification of Babel had come between parent and child; and when at times the old people, forgetful of all that had intervened, addressed their restored boy in their own vernacular, he looked up distressed and bewildered, not knowing how to answer.

There is nothing to add to such a story as this. A thousand suggestions may spring from it concerning those mysteries of parting and waiting and meeting again, both in life and death, of which all our histories are full.

I. F. M.

HE prettily-situated parish of Kirkliston, foris partly in the county of Linlithgow and partly in that of Edinburgh, the River Almond forming the boundary between the two counties.

Tradition asserts that at a remote period a large tract of the surrounding country belonged to a distinguished family of the name of Liston, which

KIRKLISTON CHURCH.

circumstance gave rise to the name of the parish and district, while, according to a local antiquary, Lisston in Gaelic signifies an enclosure on the side of a river, hence the origin of Liston.

The manor of Liston was granted in the twelfth century to the Knights of the Temple, and from this period it was known as Temple Liston, the possessions of the Hospitallers and Templars being termed Temple and Hospital lands. Their successors, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, enjoyed this manor, with the exception of New Liston, till the Reformation, when Sir James Sandilands, the chief of the Order of St. John, acquired the vast estates of that opulent Order as a temporal lordship. The word "Kirk" was prefixed to Liston in the sixteenth century to distinguish the kirk town from other places within the parish bearing the name of Liston.

The church of Liston was in early times of great value, and in the ancient Toxatio was rated at seventy marks. The church, with the vicarage, the mill, and most of the adjacent lands, called the manis, or demesne, and kirk lands of Kirkliston were granted to the Bishop of St. Andrews, though when bestowed is uncertain.

* A Simon de Liston, a tenant of the Bishop of St. Andrews, in West Lothian, was one of those who swore fealty to Edward I in 1296.

↑ Dundas of Craigton obtained New Liston in 1543, and his descendants held it till after the Revolution, when it was carried into the family of Dalrymples by Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir John Dundas, who married the second Viscount Stair.

Liston was formed into the seat of the regal jurisdiction which the Bishop and his successors acquired over their estates on the southern side of the Forth. It was originally a rectory. Prynne tells us that in July, 1296, William de Kinghorn, the rector of Kirkliston, swore fealty to Edward I of England, and thereupon obtained a warrant for the recovery of his property; and Rymer, that William Hubert, or Hundibit, the rector of Liston, travelled into England attended by six horsemen. In 1406 and 1409 Andrew de Howick, a canon of Dunkeld, was rector of Kirkliston and secretary to the Regent Albany, whose charters he witnessed. Niddrie Castle, to which Queen Mary was conveyed by Lord Seton on her escape from Lochleven Castle, once stood in the parish of Kirkliston, and the baron of the castle was of old the hereditary bailie of the ecclesiastical regality of the parish. In the reign of David 1 Alexander Seton granted to Ada Forrest two ploughs of land in the town of Niddrie in Linlithgowshire.

A perpetual vicarage appears to have been established for the cure of the church, while the parsonage was enjoyed by the Archbishop of St. Andrews as a mensual benefice. In 1593 the Parliament passed an Act for dissolving the parsonage and the vicarage of Kirkliston.

During the reign of James VI Kirkliston, as belonging to the Archbishop of St. Andrews, was attached to the presbytery of Dunfermline,* with which it continued till episcopacy was abolished in 1670, when it fell to the King.

The parish church, which is said to have been built in the twelfth century, occupies an elevated situation on the northern bank of the Almond, and commands a fine and extensive view. In the south side of the building there is an arched

complete repair in 1822, and is now being restored and added to at a cost of £4,000.

While the quaint old tower, from which

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,"

.

NON .

and Saxon doorway of Kirkliston Church attract thither the antiquarian and the artist, a door a little to the right of the latter, and surmounted by a Latin inscription (VIRTVTE. DECET SANGVINE. NITI .), excites a yet deeper interest in the breasts of those over whom the genius of Sir Walter Scott exercises its magic spell, for it communicates with the Stair family vault, where lie the remains of the Hon. Janet Dalrymple-the Lucy Ashton of "The Bride of Lammermoor."

Sir Walter's well-known tale is founded on the sad story of the marriage which followed upon the contract recently discovered at St. Mary's Isle, the seat of the Earl of Selkirk, who represents the family of the Dunbars of Baldoon, an ancient estate in Wigtownshire, now the property of the Earl of Galloway, to whom it was sold in 1793.

David Dunbar the younger, of Baldoon, married Janet Dalrymple, eldest daughter of the celebrated James, Viscount of Stair, Lord President of the Court of Session. The young lady had privately engaged herself to Lord Rutherford, the <listant relative and heir of Andrew Rutherford, Earl of Teviot, and was forced by her mother to discard him on account of his political principles, or want of fortune, for the successor to the rich and extensive lands of Baldoon, in the south of Scotland-the ivied ruins of whose ancient tower are still to be seen close to the farmhouse of that

name.

To this tower, according to tradition, David Dunbar led his unwilling bride, and there occurred the terrible tragedy which forms the groundwork of Sir Walter's thrilling tale. The Earl of Selkirk, as the representative of the Dunbars of Baldoon, is in possession of the family papers, and it was amongst these that he accidentally discovered the marriage contract previously alluded to. There are four signatures attached to it, namely, those of David Dunbar (the bridegroom), Janet Dalrymple (the bride), James Dalrymple (bride's father), Baldoon (bridegroom's father). One of the witnesses, James Dalrymple, would most probably be the bride's brother, who rode before his sister to church, and who afterwards said that her hand, which lay in his as she held her arm round his waist, was as cold and damp as marble. Judging, however, from the facsimile taken from the document, there is little evidence of agitation in the bride's signature.

The ill-fated young lady survived her marriage little more than a fortnight, having been married on the 24th of August, 1667, and dying on the 15th September in the same year. The bridegroom was killed by a fall from his horse as he rode between Leith and Holyrood House on 28th March, 1682; while his unfortunate rival, Lord Rutherford, of whom mention is again made in

connection with the prosecution of a Captain Rutherford, who sought to establish a claim on the estate of his lordship's brother, the second lord, by means of forged documents, died childless in 1685.

The celebrated John, Earl of Stair, field-marshal of his Majesty's forces, a nobleman alike distinguished in the field and in the Cabinet, inherited from his mother the beautiful estate of Newliston,* now the seat of Thomas Alexander Hog, Esq., where he resided for twenty years subsequent to his recall from his embassy at Paris in 1720. The extensive pleasure-grounds of Newliston were laid out and planned by him, the trees being grouped, it is said, in exact resemblance of the array of the British troops on the eve of the battle of Dettingen.t

In consequence of the Earl of Stair having his residence in the parish, Kirkliston Church became the burial-place of the family. The coffins of the deceased Dalrymples were brought thither from Wigtownshire, amongst others that of the hapless bride of Baldoon.

In Chambers's "Domestic Annals of Scotland" the following singular incident is given in connection with the interment of Dame Margaret-the Lady Ashton of Sir Walter's novel :

1692. In this year died the Viscountess Stair -born Margaret Ross of Balniel, in Wigtownshire-the wife of the ablest man of his age and country, and mother of a race which has included an extraordinary number of men of talent and official distinction. The pair had been married for nearly fifty years, and they were tenderly attached to the last."

Lady Stair is admitted to have been a woman of a soaring mind, of great shrewdness and energy of character, and skilled in the ways of the world; and to these qualities on her part it was perhaps partly owing that her family prospered so wonderfully. The public, however, had such a sense of her singular power over fortune as to believe that she possessed necromantic gifts and trafficked with the evil one. An order which she left at her death regarding the disposal of her body helped to confirm the popular notion. She desired that she might not be put underground, but that her coffin should stand upright on one end of it, promising that while she remained in that position the Dalrymples should continue to flourish. What was the old lady's motive for the request, or whether she really made such a promise, I shall not take upon me to determine; but it is certain that her coffin stands upright in the aisle of the church of Kirkliston.

* Edward I of Englaud, when marching to Falkirk, where he defeated the Scottish troops on the 22nd July, 1298, lay for some time with his army close to Kirkliston, where it mutinied, and the field in which, according to tradition, the king's tent was pitched is immediately to the south-west of the village on the property of Newliston.

A distinguished agriculturist of the name of Dalziel came to the parish of Kirkliston, at the express desire of the Earl of Stair, to superintend the improvement of his estate. Under his direction the mode of ploughing in common use in the Low Countries, viz., by two horses or oxen, was adopted on his lordship's property, instead of the old Scotch fashion of ploughing by means of six, eight, or twelve oxen; and for the first time in Scotland cabbages, potatoes, and turnips were planted in the fields of Newliston.