CLEAR WATERS 



reservoir at the head of Rede, which has been made 

 for Newcastle, and is full, by the way, of free-rising 

 trout. 



It is a great change from here to the country of the 

 Till, the * sullen Till ' of Scott's Marmion. Rising in 

 the Cheviots, about half-way down their course, and 

 pointing for the eastern shore, it seems to flinch in 

 almost infancy from the prospect of breaking through 

 the isolated block of upland that may be called the 

 Chillingham moors, a feat performed by its cradle 

 neighbour, the Aln. But the Till is a gentle stream, 

 nearly always ill-suited for aggressive action and break- 

 ing its way through mountain ridges. So it turns 

 away to the open north, and, running for some miles 

 under its cradle name of Breamish, waters ChiUing- 

 ham on its way ; and from thence, in a succession of 

 sinuous bends, prattles cheerily on to the broad, flat 

 pasture-lands below Wooler. Here, beneath the 

 shadow of the most northerly and loftiest section of 

 the Cheviots, it sets its face through endless green 

 flats for Flodden field and the Tweed. And as if 

 always eager to prolong its easy journeying through 

 these fat haughs, it twists from edge to edge for no 

 apparent purpose, and with a sinuosity that cuts a 

 most eccentric figure on a map. Rippling gently over 

 gravelly shallows of singularly lustrous colouring and 

 varied hue, it loiters again and again, so slight is its 

 fall in sullen deeps, or dubs, into which the soft, over- 

 hanging red banks seem for ever toppling. Unlike 

 any other Northumbrian river, the Till might almost 

 have been imported straight from Herefordshire, so 

 much in its banks, its colouring, its paces, and its 



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