J. R. Hildebrand, the author of Edinburgh, Athens of the North: Romantic History of Cramped Medieval City Vies with Austere Beauty of Newer Wide Streets and Stately Squares, National Geographic Magazine, August, 1932, calls the city "singularly, if austerely beautiful," (p. 219).
In the center of the city rises a prominent five hundred foot tall hill: "For more than a thousand years Scottish history has swirled about Castle Rock; to it clings the driftwood of momentous events, the barnacles of glamorous and strange memories, until it seems that every stone has a story," (p. 227). Once this rock was declared an official part of Canada and the decree was never revoked. The intrigues of kings, queens and their retinues are properly lavish and murderous.
As to the activities of its citizens in 1932, "Edinburgh is a white collar-city, and besides insurance and banking, its chief functions are printing and publishing, law and medicine, and its "foremost industry" is education," (p. 235). Manufacturing in those years included wool garments and beer breweries.
Scots in general flocked to the many courses to play games of golf. In Edinburgh, they can even now be active later in the evening than in most places due to the city's geography "in the latitude of Labrador, and it does not get dark in midsummer until an hour or so before midnight," (p. 235).
There are quite a few references to America in Edinburgh in 1932. "In the Carlton burial ground is a graceful statue of Abraham Lincoln, in memory of Scottish American soldiers who fell in our Civil War," (p. 237). Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone was born there. Also, for years, John James Audubon maintained a home in Edinburgh painting "The Birds of America," (p. 247). It's a small world!
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