CLEAR WATERS 



tions, and it was a quite futile though entertaining duel, 

 so far as the echoes of it, which lasted into my time, 

 come back to me. Perhaps the incident stuck in my 

 mind because, at a period when one's experience 

 was inevitably limited, I had met the northern 

 champion on the river bank, while his south country 

 opponent about the same time had given me my first 

 encouragement at literary effort, a thing one never 

 forgets. 



The Blackadder, like the Whiteadder and many 

 other fine streams unknown to the outer world, rises 

 in the Lammermuirs, but for most of its course it 

 plashes through the fertile lowlands of Berwickshire. 

 Though smaller than its sister river, it provides some 

 thirty miles of trouting, over some two-thirds of 

 which the pubHc, in the shape of many scores of 

 anglers, exercise a perennial privilege which apparently 

 has no serious effect upon its stock of trout. I have 

 never fished the Blackadder, though I know much of 

 it well as a passer-by. It has but a moderate share, 

 however, of the romance and charm of its bigger 

 sister. The true rival of the Whiteadder upon the 

 eastern march in this respect, as indeed in fishing 

 qualities, and more renowned in song and story, is the 

 Leader, which, rising at the western end of the 

 Lammermuirs, runs down through Lauderdale to 

 join the Tweed near Melrose. There are plenty of 

 men in Lauderdale who maintain that their river is 

 even better than the Whiteadder. Personally I do 

 not agree with them, but it is assuredly a most beautiful 

 stream, and I have fished over much of it. It presents 

 the same insoluble problem — nay, an even greater 

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