136 TRANSACTIONS. 
made up to them by the Gevernment. . . . Over the river 
near the town is a small mount, which would not hold at the top 
above thirty people. It is called The Moat, and it is supposed 
that the heads of the place held their meetings here and promulged 
their laws to the people. There is a very fine prospect from it of 
the country round. I saw from it Lincluden, an old nunnery, and 
near it is a monastery called Holy Rhood (qy., Holywood), and at 
some distance from Dumfries what is called New Abby, and in the 
records Addatia dulci cordis. (Johannes de Sacrobosco, an eminent 
mathematician of the thirteenth century, whose treatise, ‘ De 
Spheera Mundi,’ continued to be used in the schools for nearly four 
hundred years, is believed to have been originally a professed 
brother of the Convent of Holywood.) Not far from Dumfries is 
a chapel called Christo, where St. Christopher Setin is buried, who 
was beheaded (though a Scotchman and no subject) by Edward the 
First.” It will be observed that the Bishop’s history is not of the 
most accurate character, but the notices in his next journey are 
nearer to what is generally received. 
Dr Pococke’s next recorded journey ten years afterwards was 
a more extended one, and included the Orkneys and Western 
Islands. It is described in three large folio volumes in MS. In 
the beginning of May, 1760, he arrived in Dumfries from Port- 
patrick. “I came from Newabbey,” he writes, “six miles near 
the Nith, the old Noiras or Nidius, having a bog to the right and 
pleasant hills to tke left, to Dumfries, in Nithesdale, where I was 
in 1747 (2). This town carried on a great tobacco trade until the 
Tobacco Act passed, which destroyed that commerce, and the 
people being grown rich, and their money not employed in trade, 
they have lately adorned the town with beautiful buildings of the 
red hewn freestone, and the streets are most exceedingly well 
paved (!). They have a handsome town-house, and all is kept very 
clean ; so that it is one of the handsomest towns in Great Britain 
(and Pococke had travelled over the most of it), and very 
pleasantly situated on the Nith, over which there isa large bridge ; 
and as the Assizes are held here for all the south part of Scotland, 
the town is much frequented by lawyers. The shipping lie under 
Screfel (sic), eight miles below Dumfries, and come up three miles 
higher to unload at Glenteyrel (Glencaple?) Here was a friary 
of Conventuals, founded by the same Devorgilla (referring to a 
previous account of Sweetheart Abbey), in which John Duns 
Scotus took upon him the habit, who died in 1308 at Cologn. In 
