CLEAR WATERS 



X 



THE WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 



NOBODY in the south has ever heard of the 

 Whiteadder, and that very fact to my think- 

 ing is one of its many charms. There would 

 be nothing whatever in such obscurity if this were a 

 river in Sutherlandshire or the Hebrides. But it is 

 remarkable that a trouting stream which runs a broad, 

 brawling course for forty miles, and at its best points 

 is virtually within sound of the London and Edinburgh 

 mail trains, should thus have kept itself to itself, and 

 its very name unknown to the public ear. For that 

 a hungry angling public, outside that which dwells 

 between, let us say, Edinburgh and Newcastle in- 

 clusive, has never heard of it is a fact that a sufficiently 

 wide acquaintance among the fraternity enables me 

 to set down with tolerable confidence. The humour 

 of the situation — and I think there is some humour 

 in it — is in no way lessened by the further fact that 

 this really noble river has been for all time free to 

 any one who likes to fish it, the whole way from its 

 wild infancy in the high moors to its junction with 

 the Tweed in sight of Berwick. To clinch the matter, 

 lest such an incredible state of affairs should breed a 

 suspicion in the reader's mind that the river is un- 

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