98 THE BORDER ANGLER. 



watcher pulls a string which drags an old kettle across 

 the floor of the sheil, some fifty or a hundred yards off, 

 where the fishermen are sleeping or mending their nets. 

 Out rush a couple of booted Northumbrians one jumps 

 into the boat, and the other seizes the rope attached to 

 the net the boat makes its circle in the water, and it 

 is five to one that in ten minutes the salmon is gasping 

 on the bank. Of course there is no rod-fishing where 

 these shots are pulled; but in rocky places, where nets 

 cannot be wrought, and where salmon or grilse are in- 

 duced by drought to lie, instead of making their way 

 up the river, the angling is sometimes excellent. We 

 are acquainted with an angler who, we have been told, 

 killed seventeen salmon and grilse in one autumn morn- 

 ing, in the stream below the Chain Bridge, about four 

 miles above Berwick, apart of the river which the 

 tide covers every day. At Horncliffe there are one or 

 two casts that are always worth trying when the river 

 is not in a state to induce salmon to run. 



BERWICK is a town of 13,000 inhabitants the ter- 

 minus of the main line of the North British Eailway 

 and with all the accommodation that angler or tra- 

 veller could desire.* Its peculiar trade is salmon, its 

 chief trading company being the owners or lessees of 

 almost the whole of the fishings for the last five miles 

 of the river's course. As may be supposed from what 

 we have stated, there has latterly been a great falling- 

 off in this trade ; but in 1858 a bright glimpse of the 

 fishings of old times was obtained. The following 



* For a short description of Berwick, see the " Handbook to 

 Berwick-upon-Tweed." 



