46 NIMROUS NORTHERN TOUR. 



is to say, unless, like poor Monsieur of the cuisine, the adver- 

 tising party is weary of life and wishes to avoid the discredit of 

 felo de se. 



Our sawney of a post boy was not content with finding a gate 

 in the park wide open, but in compliment, as I suppose, to the 

 Laird of the Castle, he must dismount to shut it. No sooner had 

 he got in the rear of the carriage than Mr. Campbell started the 

 horses off by way of " a lark ;" and had not the fellow with great 

 adroitness caught hold of one of them, just as they were getting 

 into a gallop for they were a very spicy pair the result of the 

 " lark" would have been one or the other of the following catas- 

 trophies : We should either have been capsized over a heap of 

 earth, thrown up out of a drain in the road, a few yards t farther ; 

 or comfortably landed, as Paddy says, amongst the wild ducks in 

 the lake, in about two fathoms of fresh water. Nor was this all. 

 In each of these predicaments, had such been our fate, I should 

 have been undermost of the three, and ere it had come to my 

 turn to have crept out of the drag, I think I should have stood a 

 fair chance of ending my Tour in Dunse park. As it happened, 

 we arrived at Dunse without any mishap, and though before I 

 retired to my couch I put up a prayer for my safe deliverance, I 

 have reason to believe that I fell asleep muttering to myself these 

 words : " You are a devilish pleasant fellow, Mr. Campbell, any- 

 where but in a post-chaise/' 



Despairing of seeing hounds over Berwickshire on the power- 

 less animals sent for me from Edinburgh, and unwilling to 

 trespass further on Lord Elcho's stable, I determined on missing 

 Thursday's hunting with his lordship, and trotting over to Corn- 

 hill for the purpose of seeing the Galewood pack on that day, 

 the 1 3th of November at Pawston, having previously written to 

 King to send me another horse in the room of the one I had had 

 a taste of, and found perfectly unfit to carry me with hounds. 

 Cornhill is a large roadside post house, about a mile south of the 

 fine bridge over the Tweed at Coldstream, on the great North 

 road, and about fifteen miles from Dunse ; a better, or more 

 reasonable inn, no sportsman could desire, with excellent stables 

 for hunters. It was here that I first saw that curiously con- 

 structed carriage called the curricle mail, which, taking the bags 

 from the down mail at Morpeth, and travelling by a shorter cut, 

 arrives at Edinburgh sufficiently early to enable letters to be 

 answered by the up mail, which it takes by the same route to 

 Morpeth, It is said to travel at the rate of fourteen miles in the 

 hour ! 



It would require the aid of the pencil to show how the horses 

 are put into this curricle mail, which merely consists of a close 



