Library Article

This image from Stirling Castle towards the north is from the Underwood series of Stereoview Cards.  It is number 7535, Underwood & Underwood Publishers, New York, London, Toronto  and Ottumwa Kansas.Underwood & Underwood Image of Stirling Castle (1905)

On the front of the card is has the following caption:  "Looking from Stirling Castle on the cliffs northward twoard rugged Highlands of Scotland.  Copyright 1905 by Underwood & Underwood."

On the back of the card is more information about the image and surrounding area: "We are facing northward toward the Grampian Hills and the picturesquely rugged Highlands.

This fertile valley of the Forth (we can see the windings of the river farther up there beyone the green fields) is one of the most beautiful parts of all Scotland.  Ages ago there must have been right here a stream vastly wider and deeper than the pretty stream which now runs through, and this height where we are now perched was doubtless a rocky island.

More than seven centuries ago some Scottish prince built his fortress here, where it could be defended with bow and spear, and ever since it has been a place where history has been lived and wrought.  Three times the English seized if from the Scots; three times the Scots beseized it back at the price of brave men's lives.  Six hundred years ago (1304) a little garrison of Scottish soldiers shut themselves up here and held the ground for three months against the assulting army of England led by Edward I; it almost broke their hearts when they were overcome at last.  Since 1330 no foe has besieged the citadel, though in 1746 Prince Charlies men made a gallant attempt to gain for him the old home of his fathers, the castle here, where so many Stuarts had been born and baptized and crowned, but that uprising came to its tragic end away over the horizon hills, at Culloden Moor, a hundred miles away near Inverness.

See histories of Scotland, Scott's Waverly gives a romantic account of the Jacobite uprising of 1743-6.  Sterograph 7530 shows the Castle brm below. (From Notes of Travel, No 27."

The caption is then listed in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian on the bottom of the card.