( 5 ) 



CHAPTER II. 



ANGLING ON THE BORDERS. 



(^^^10 tells us that the M^at^e, the aborigmal 

 PSLS inhabitants of probably the whole country 

 (TS^^ between the two great Roman walls, and cer- 

 ) tainly of the south-eastern borders, amongst other 

 peculiarities of habit, abstained entirely from the use of 

 fish. Tweed was running then as now : the Salmon, 

 with no T-nets at Goswick and no stell-nets at Ber- 

 wick to stay his course, must have been " belling " 

 and " ower-setting" in every pool, and swarming up 

 all the tributaries, then unpolluted with mills and fac- 

 tories; — the Trout, when the shower of ephemerce 

 came daily over the water, must have made it boil 

 like a cauldron. Yet no fly or worm was thrown to 

 tempt them — no leister launched at them, no cairn-net 

 quietly dropt in an eddy, and no deadly straik-net 

 drawn through their homes to decimate their numbers. 

 Foolish Maeatae ! — unworthy progenitors — if indeed 

 they were so in any degree — of the black-fishing ich- 

 thyophagi of the Teviot and the kipper-consumers of 

 Peebles ! We may be sure that when their Roman 

 conqueror fixed his camp at Lessudden, he was not long 

 in fathoming the mysteries of The Pot,* or in putting 



* " The Pot" is the name of a noted salmon cast in the upper 

 llertoun water, near St. Bosv/ell's. 



