Nethan, a stream of Lesmahagow parish, Lanarkshire, rising close to the Ayrshire border, at an altitude of 550 feet above sea-level, and running 13 miles north-north-eastward, till, after a total descent of 1355 feet, it falls into the Clyde at Crossford, 4¾ miles NW by W of Lanark. It receives in its progress Logan Water and a number of burns; traverses, in the first. 3½ miles of its course, a bare, moorish upland tract; and thereafter runs along a picturesque narrow vale, well-adorned with natural wood, and embellished with mansions and parks, into a deep ravine. At a point 1¾ mile SSW of Crossford it is spanned by a viaduct of the Lesmahagow railway, one of the grandest structures of its kind in Scotland, loftier from foundation to parapet than either the great viaduct at Newcastle-on-Tyne, or the Britannia Bridge across the Menai Strait; and midway between the viaduct and Crossford it is overhung by the ruin of Craignethan Castle, the prototype of Sir Walter Scott's 'Tillietudlem.'-Ord. Sur., sh. 23, 1865.
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