SUNDERLAND HALL 



see a stout fly walking along their outline ; and the far-famed 

 Tweed appeared a naked stream, between bare hills, without 

 a tree or a thicket on its banks. And yet such had been the 

 magic web of poetry and romance thrown over the whole, 

 that it had a greater charm for me than the richest scenery 

 I had ever beheld in England." 



Yet Dorothy Wordsworth discerned in this land- 

 scape a physical charm of which her father was not 

 sensible. 



" In one very sweet part of the vale," she notes in her 

 journal, " a gate crossed the road, which was opened by an 

 old woman who lived in a cottage close to it. I said to her 

 'You live in a very pretty place.' * Yes,' she replied, 'the 

 water o' Tweed is a bonnie water.' The lines of the hills are 

 flowing and beautiful ; the reaches of the vale long. In some 

 places appear the remains of a forest, in others you will see 

 as lovely a combination of forms as any traveller who goes in 

 search of the picturesque need desire, and yet perhaps without 

 a single tree ; or at least, if trees are there, they should be 

 very few, and he shall not care whether they be there or not." 



The "magic web" lies as close and glitters as 

 fair as when these words were written nearly ninety 

 years ago ; and the same hands that wove it wrought 

 the earliest stages in transforming the physical land- 

 scape. When Scott began planting trees at Abbots- 

 ford, almost every vestige of the Caledonian forest 

 had vanished from Tweedside, and the land wore 

 that naked aspect which disappointed Washington 

 Irving. But no one visiting Tweeddale and Teviot- 

 dale nowadays can complain that they are treeless. 

 Fine timber adorns the parks, broad woodlands 



143 



