CHEVIOT 113 



overhead the croak of the white gulls from Pallins- 

 burn. 



Man is all but absent : the only specimen seen all 

 day was an aged Scot, with vast bushy beard and a 

 pack on his back, who, when I chanced on him, was 

 lighting- his pipe with a burning glass. He told me he 

 was "jest seeking a wee bit pickle o' 'oo'" (wool), and 

 had walked that morning "fra' Scotch Belford, no that 

 awfu' far" — though it is a dozen miles and more. Poor 

 old soul, he reckoned a pound of wool (worth sixpence), 

 a fair day's *pick, and spent his summer among the hills, 

 gathering stray scraps of wool, and depending on 

 shepherds for chance accommodation. Yet he was not 

 a tramp. That is a different species, and one that is 

 notably abundant on the Borders. 



A.t the head of the glen lies Langleeford, a lonely 

 farmstead — the last house in England, ensconsed amid 

 sheltering pinewood, that protect it from the snowblasts 

 of winter. To-day, however, the heat is tropical, but for 

 the light breeze that comes redolent of the fragrance of 

 pine and hawthorn, rowan, woodbine, and a score of 

 Nature's exquisite perfumes. It was here, at Langlee- 

 ford, that just a century before (in the autumn of 1791), 

 Sir Walter Scott wrote to his friend, William Clerk in 

 Edinburgh, from "the very centre of the Cheviot hills, 

 in one of the wildest and most romantic situations 

 which your imagination, always fertile, ever suggested. 

 We are amidst places renowned by the feats of former 

 days. Each hill is crowned by a tower, or camp, or 

 cairn ; and nowhere can you be nearer more fields of 

 battle — Flodden, Otterburn, Chevy Chase, Ford, Chil- 

 ling-ham, Copeland Castle, are all within the compass 

 of a forenoon's ride. Out of brooks with which these 



H 



