A SUMMER EAMBLE ON CHEVIOT. 55 



luxuriantly, becoming scant and dwarfed, and mixed with 

 the golden leaves of the bleaberry-ling, the whortle-berry, 

 and the creeping heath. For the last few hundred feet the 

 vegetation is so stunted as to resemble a great soft mossy 

 carpet, as easy to the tread as those of Turkey, though 

 perhaps not so smooth, since strewn broadcast on it lie 

 patches of the dark grey rocks — porphyry, dolerite, and 

 granite. The actual summit is a broad flat plateau, perhaps 

 half a mile in extent. Bleak and wild-looking, the plateau 

 is only half-clothed with coarse bent and cotton-grass, inter- 

 spersed with barren mosshags, oozy peat-flats, and ravines. 

 The small white flowers of the cloud-berry {Ruhus caDii- 

 morus), a plant W'hich only flourishes at altitudes of some 

 2,000 feet, were a relief to the monotony of barrenness, 

 together with tufts of Lycopodium and the trailing shoots of 

 the crowberry. The Alpine Cornus Succica also grows at 

 one spot here — a very rare British plant, only found on 

 Cheviot and on one other of the northern fells. The only 

 birds seen on the summit (2,676 feet) were a Grouse or two 

 — none nest so high — a few Golden Plovers, and — a charm- 

 ing sight — quite a small colony of Dunlins. There were five 

 or six pairs of this graceful little wader, all breeding together 

 among some moory tussocks, and extremely tame, perching 

 within a dozen yards. We sat and watched them for some 

 time wdth the binocular — pretty little chestnut- striped birds, 

 with a black patch on the breast. 



On a bright, clear day the view from Cheviot amply repays 

 the labour of the climb up. The eye ranges over a pano- 

 rama of wild mountain land. Looking northward across the 

 fertile vale of Tweed, with glimpses here and there of its 

 silver thread, the horizon is bounded by interminable Lam- 

 mermnirs. The triple crests of the Eildons, above Melrose, 

 are prominent objects to the west, while all the succession of 

 rolling fell ranges along the Border are clearly distinguish- 

 able. In the far-away distance the steam of a train in the 

 " Waverley route " seems incongruous, so we turn south- 

 ward. Here, too, there are hills — nothing but hills. Kelso 

 Cleugh and the Windy Gyle, the broad contour of Shillmoor, 

 and, close at hand, th^ rival peak of Hedgehope, w^hose 



