64 Transactions. 



more than it is at present, and thirteen and a half feet 

 in mean breadth. And at the end of the bridge as it now 

 stands, three arches having been removed, was a gate or port, 

 ■where the duties and customs on goods and cattle coming into 

 the town were taken up and brought to account in the Mona- 

 stery. 



The Nith has the usual characteristics of a mountain 

 river, and varies very considerably from time to time, both in 

 bulk or quantity, and flow. These changes woidd be still 

 more marked in former times, the channel of the river being 

 then broader. There were, accordingly, fords or passages by 

 which the river might be crossed at low water. Two of these, 

 on either side of the bridge, would seem to have allowed 

 entrance into the town, the town waU not being carried on 

 here. But the defenceless state of the town at this place was 

 perhaps a matter of less consequence than the convenience of 

 its being open, the country on the west being friendly as the 

 territory of the lords of Galloway. 



Here, then, lay the fair town of Dumfries, with its spacious 

 High Street, stretching Like a back-bone and spinal marrow to 

 the parish church of St Michael's, not very much short of 

 half a mile ; and crossed after the fashion of an Anglo-Saxon 

 village by the Friars' Vennel to the west, and by a street 

 which, we presume, must have existed in old times, leading 

 to the East Port. This might be what is now Chapel 

 Street, etc. 



The principal structures of the town were the Castle and 

 Parish Church, the Market Cross, Council Chamber, and 

 Tolbooth, and the Monastery of Grey Friars, with the Old 

 Chapel and Lady Chapel — all now, it is believed, mere histo- 

 rical antiquities, existing only in books and records, corrobo- 

 rated, it may be, by present names of places, or the discovery 

 of some fragment of the ancient structures. 



This circumstance, that so many of the ancient buildings 

 have now ceased to exist, gives a peculiar character to anti- 



