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CHAPTER II. 

 ANGLING ON THE BORDERS. 



us ^ at ^ e Mseatse, tii e aboriginal 

 inhabitants of probably the whole country 

 between the two great Eoman walls, and cer- 

 tainly of the south-eastern borders, amongst other 

 peculiarities of habit, abstained entirely from the use of 

 fish. Tweed was running then as now : the Salmon, 

 with no T-nets at Goswick and no stell-nets at Ber- 

 wick to stay his course, must have been " belling " 

 and " ower-setting " in every pool, and swarming up 

 all the tributaries, then unpolluted with mills and fac- 

 tories; the Trout, when the shower of ephemera 

 came daily over the water, must have made it boil 

 like a cauldron. Yet no fly or worm was thrown to 

 tempt them no leister launched at them, no cairn-net 

 quietly dropt in an eddy, and no deadly straik-net 

 drawn through their homes to decimate their numbers. 

 Foolish Mssatse! unworthy progenitors if indeed 

 they were so in any degree of the black-fishing ich- 

 thyophagi of the Teviot and the kipper- consumers of 

 Peebles! We may be sure that when their Kornan 

 conqueror fixed his camp at Lessudden, he was not long 

 in fathoming the mysteries of The Pot,* or in putting 



* " The Pot" is the name of a noted salmon cast in the upper 

 Mertoun water, near St. Boswell's. 



