3-021-178 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Index plan of the general view of Edinburgh, 1868. 'The great natural features of the position will at once be recognised. The spectator is supposed to be standing in the Queen-street Gardens, in front of Abercrombie-place, which is in the middle of the New Town. He looks due south; the Old Town and the Castle are right before him; the Calton Hill, with its monuments, and Arthur's Seat, with its lonely majesty, rise at his left hand; the Braid Hill and the Pentlands, five miles distant, are seen beyond the Meadows. The wide hollow partly occupied by the Prince's-street Gardens, lying between the New Town and the Old Town, is the former bed of the North Loch, the eastern part of which is now occupied by the railway terminus. The Grassmarket and the Cowgate are sunk quite out of sight on the farther side of the Old Town. The streets and squares beyond are of comparatively modem construction. There and in the open ground, south of Heriot's Hospital and Lauriston, extending to the Boroughmoor and Bruntsfield Links, was the primeval waste of wood and water, the South Loch and the forest'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.