From the High Street we turned aside into the Grass-Market, the scene of
the Porteous Mob; and we found in the pavement a cross on the site where
the execution of Porteous is supposed to have taken place.



THE CASTLE.


Returning thence to the High Street, we followed it up to the Castle,
which is nearer the town, and of more easy access from it, than I had
supposed. There is a large court or parade before the castle gate, with
a parapet on the abrupt side of the hill, looking towards Arthur's Seat
and Salisbury Crags, mud overhanging a portion of the old town. As we
leaned over this parapet, my nose was conscious of the bad odor of
Edinburgh, although the streets, whence it must have come, were hundreds
of feet below. I have had some experience of this ugly smell in the poor
streets of Liverpool; but I think I never perceived it before crossing
the Atlantic. It is the odor of an old system of life; the scent of the
pine forests is still too recent with us for it to be known in America.

The Castle of Edinburgh is free (as appears to be the case with all
garrisoned places in Great Britain) to the entrance of any peaceable
person. So we went in, and found a large space enclosed within the
walls, and dwellings for officers, and accommodation for soldiers, who
were being drilled, or loitering about; and as the hill still ascends
within the external wall of the castle, we climbed to the summit, and
there found an old soldier whom we engaged to be our guide. He showed us
Mons Meg, a great old cannon, broken at the breech, but still aimed
threateningly from the highest ramparts; and then he admitted us into an