158 WILD SCENERY. 



or hillock, where, in fancied security, the indolent pack is 

 reposing. 



We had been upon the moors some hours our walk was 

 enlivened by success, and the time had arrived when the 

 commissariat was required, and old John's supplies were ordered 

 from the rear. A rivulet was reported to be just round the hill, 

 and thither our course was directed. 



We turned a rugged brow suddenly, and never did a 

 sweeter spot present itself to an exhausted sportsman ; and 

 resting on the bank of a ravine, where a small stream trickled 

 over a precipice, forming beneath its brow a basin of crystal 

 water, we selected this for our " bivouac." Wild myrtle and 

 shrub-like heather closed the opposite sides, and one spot, 

 where the rivulet elbowed back, w 7 as covered with short green 

 moss, that seemed rather an effort of human art, than a piece 

 of natural arrangement. 



Here we rested and while baskets were unpacked, and the 

 cloth extended upon the velvet surface we reposed upon, I 

 looked with feelings which I cannot describe, upon the wild 

 and melancholy scene below. 



It was a ruined chapel and deserted burying-place one 

 gable of the building alone was standing, and, from beneath 

 the ivied wall, a spring gushed out and united itself with the 

 rivulet I have described. A stone cross, whose rude work- 

 manship showed its antiquity, was erected beside the fountain ; 

 and although the cemetery had long since been deserted, .a 

 circle round the well* was freshly worn in the turf, and a 



* The following passage is quoted from " The Minstrelsy of the 

 Border:" " Many run superstitiously to other wells, and there obtain, as 

 they imagine, health and advantage ; and then they offer bread and cheese, 

 or money, by throwing them into the well." And again : " In the 

 bounds of the lands of Eccles, belonging to a lineage, of the name of 

 Maitland, there is a loch, called the Dowloc/i, of old resorted to, with 

 much superstition, as medicinal both for men and beasts, and that with 

 such ceremonies as are shrewdly suspected to have begun with witch- 

 craft, and increased afterwards by magical directions. For bringing of a 

 cloth or somewhat that did relate to the bodies of men arid women, and 

 a shoe or tether belonging to a cow or horse, and these being cast into 

 the loch, if they did float it was taken for a good omen of recovery, and a 

 part of the water carried to the patient, though to remote places, without 

 saluting or speaking to any they met by the way ; but if they did sink, 

 the recovery of the party was hopeless. This custom was of late much 

 curbed and restrained ; but since the discovery of many medicinal fountains 

 near the place, the vulgar, holding that it may be as medicinal as these 



