194 SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 



stepping-stones ; and upon mills that, if you may 

 judge by the colouring of their massive walls, must 

 have had their wheels turned by those rushes almost 

 from time immemorial. Not a ford, or pass, or bridge 

 but has been the scene of sharp fighting in the old 

 raiding days ; and at least two Scottish monarchs came 

 to sorrow with their hosts almost within an arrow-flight 

 of Alnwick Castle. The very monks, who owed com- 

 parative immunity as much to the secluded situation of 

 their convents as to their sanctity, are said to have 

 been betrayed on more than one occasion by the bells 

 they had tolled prematurely in gratitude for their 

 deliverance from the sacriligious invader. 



Mr. Henderson proceeds to tell how, after con- 

 fining his sport for several years to the Wear and 

 the Coquet, he went on to wander farther afield, to 

 " the Glen, with its picturesque Bell of Yeavering ; the 

 Tweed, dear to the angler as to the poet ; the Till, 

 so deadly, for all it flows so still ; the Bowmont, slowly 

 stealing through its peaceful vale ; the Eden, tumbling 

 from the rocks of Newton Don spot blessed alike by 

 fishermen and lovers true ; the Breamish, scene of, ah ! 

 how many happy hours enshrined in my memory ! the 

 Cale, flowing beneath the Dragon's Lair ; and the 

 Whiteadder, which, from its long trailing in snake-like 

 coils, first gained its loathsome name." It was in the 

 autumn of 1839 an era m ms life tnat ^ e ^ rst began 

 his acquaintance with the Tweed. It is sadly tantalising 

 to hear of the terms on which a sportsman might get 

 the best of fishing in these unsophisticated days, in the 



