36 ORMISTOUN'S LETTERS 



shall be glad to find myself mistaken and desire to be set right 

 if I am. When the new Houses are started in the Town, 

 people who pass will begin to think us in earnest about im- 

 proving of it and by degrees they 1 see one thing after another 

 got over, which to narrow thinking people seemed Impossible, 

 and to which they never had sense to carry their short sighted 

 eyes. I was sure the managing of the Banks of Red Meadow 

 right, would answer as you tell me it has, and its being kept 

 dry will show another Impossibility got over. If the Banks 

 of the great cast ^ which was made some years ago are well made 

 up of our side, it will also keep the meadow which W™. and 

 T. Landels had quite dry. I wrote of this early and if you 

 observe my Letter I never proposed a great work of it or 

 casting up all the mud from the bottom of that cast but only 

 making up such places as had fallen down of where low of our 

 side, and as I had a great deal of ditching in view I wrote of 

 this as I did early, to have it by hand before we could do 

 other things, but now (as is our way) it is delayed and so must 

 either not be done or take up the men which should and now 

 may be employed in other business. This way of doing is most 

 common with us who have an aversion to look forward and so 

 it happens in most of our undertakings that we advance slow 

 and never do things in time. I shall be glad you get more 

 men soon for let us do our best we shall fall far short of what 

 might have been done. We are now enclosing the Red 

 Meadow when the corn being cut would have allowed of 

 ditching in Stubble land and if the Banks of the cast are made 

 up, that is another work which might have been out of the 

 way. All now to be done is to make up by future diligence 

 as much as possible. When you have enclosed the Red 

 Meadow begin at east end of Porteous' land and ditch cast ^ in 

 a line with Christie^s and Porteous' till you come to the Road 

 which is to go down of West side the Red Meadow. I need 

 not tell you that this must be double as it is both to keep out 



1 This refers to a wide, open ditch. Deep tile-draining, as we know it now, 

 was nowhere practised till long after this period. The ditches in the Letters 

 were merely to give additional height to the fences against cattle. The frequent 

 reference to * wet places ' shows that the land was then undrained. 



2 'Cast,' a slip for east. 



