18 THE EASTERN BORDERS. 



water-flags, and choked up in many paiis with pickerel weed 

 and other aquatic plants. The channel of Leet contains shell- 

 marl, and its banks being hollowed out beneath, afford, inde- 

 pendent of occasional stones and tree-roots, excellent shelter for 

 trout. Not many years ago, the whole course of it was infested 

 with pike, but the visit of some otters, irrespective of the angler's 

 art, has completely cleared them out, and thus allowed the trout, 

 which were formerly scarce, to become more numerous*." 



But the Tweed's most considerable tributary from the north 

 is the Whiteadder, — a river to my liking superior to her more 

 celebrated sister in all but magnitude and force. I love better 

 its haughs, its sunny upland valleys, its steep banks, its many 

 cheerful picturesque mills, its trouting streams, its sinuous 

 reaches near home, and its far-away meanders amidst the green 

 hills. In the very heart of the Lammermuirs, about three miles 

 beyond our extreme limit, and on the sunny side of a green brae, 

 there is a " AVhite-well," supposed to be 1150 feet above the 

 medium sea-level f, whence bubbles to light a perennial spring 

 whose copious waters fall into an extensive bog below. Drained 

 by numerous fissures this water oozes from the bog into a stony 

 channel which leads it southwards down the narrow vale, in 

 which it receives many little livelier runlets that brattle down 

 the green hills on each side. Thus before the Whiteadder 

 has flown three miles to Millknowe, a man would strain to 

 leap its current. There it meets the Fasney burn, and doubled 

 by the union, it hies its way down the valley for nearly two 

 miles before it enters Berwickshire. It has now become a fine 

 water flowing, always in an east and southerly direction, and in 

 a most sinuous tract, over a rough stony bottom, mostly in 

 streams, but with frequent still reaches and occasional deep dark 

 pools. This is the character of the water everywhere ; and the 

 valley which it enlivens is open and sunny, widening and con- 

 tracting at unequal intervals, for now the base of the pastoral 

 hills will almost touch the stream, and then a level haugh will 

 intervene to separate them alternately on the right side and the 

 left. In the upper parts of the water there is little wood, none 

 indeed but a hanging birch cover which overlooks the entrance 

 into Berwickshire ; for the hills have been deprived of their 

 forest by the flocks which now graze them in the security of 

 peace. Having received into its channel the lively Bothell, 

 which drains a parallel ridge of the Lammermuirs to the east of 

 that drained by the Whiteadder, the latter turns abruptly south- 

 wards, passes the Craneshaws, and ripples down a vale cultivated 

 for the growth of oats and barley and bordered with green sloping 

 hills. Then the Dye, coming from the west, gives the main 



* Angler's Companion, p. 22. t Stat. Ace. Ben\icks. p. 267. 



