“As I stood by yon roofless tower
      Where wall flowers scent the dewy air,
    Where the owlet lone in her ivy bower,
      Tells to the midnight moon her care—­”

Ellisland Farm is only a few miles farther on the road, never to be forgotten as the spot where “Tam-O’-Shanter” was written.  The farm home was built by Burns himself during what was probably the happiest period of his life, and he wrote many verses that indicated his joyful anticipation of life at Ellisland Farm.  But alas, the “best laid plans o’ mice and men gang oft agley,” and the personal experience of few men has more strikingly proven the truth of the now famous lines than of Robert Burns himself!  Many old castles and magnificent mansions crown the heights overlooking the river, but we caught only glimpses of some of them, surrounded as they were by immense parks, closed to the public.  Every one of the older places underwent many and strange vicissitudes in the long years of border warfare, and of them all, Drumlanrigh Castle, founded in 1689, is perhaps the most imposing.  For ten years its builder, the first Earl of Queensbury, labored on the structure, only to pass a single night in the completed building, never to revisit it, and ending his days grieving over the fortune he had squandered on this many-towered pile of gray stone.

We may not loiter along the Nithdale road, rich as it is in traditions and relics of the past.  Our progress through such a beautiful country had been slow at the best, and a circular sign-board, bearing the admonition, “Ten Miles Per Hour,” posted at each of the numerous villages on the way, was another deterrent upon undue haste.  The impression that lingers with us of these small Scotch villages is not a pleasant one.  Rows of low, gray-stone, slate-roofed cottages straggling along a single street—­generally narrow and crooked and extending for distances depending on the size of the place—­made up the average village.  Utterly unrelieved by the artistic touches of the English cottages and without the bright dashes of color from flowers and vines, with square, harsh lines and drab coloring everywhere, these Scotch villages seemed bleak and comfortless.  Many of them we passed through on this road, among them Sandquhar, with its castle, once a strong and lordly fortress but now in a deplorable state of neglect and decay, and Mauchline, where Burns farmed and sang before he removed to Dumfries.  It was like passing into another country when we entered Ayr, which, despite its age and the hoary traditions which cluster around it, is an up-to-date appearing seaport of about thirty thousand people.  It is a thriving business town with an unusually good electric street-car system, fine hotels and (not to be forgotten by motorists) excellent garages and repair shops.