8 THE SALMON RIVERS OF SCOTLAND 



the feuds, however, may have acted as a partial shield to the 

 salmon. The leister and the cairn net were no doubt busy 

 at times, but men had more absorbing slaughter on hand. 

 When more peaceful times supervened, special legislation was 

 brought into existence, dealing first with " the mouth " of the 

 river in 1771, and afterwards to give both sides a general 

 interest in protecting the fisheries, and now, for very many 

 years, the special legislation has held sway. 



From time to time loud outcries have been raised against 

 those Tweed Acts, and at intervals efforts have been made to 

 end them. Without doubt we are now nearer the realisation 

 of those efforts. No section of the community on Tweedside 

 seems particularly anxious to maintain the Acts. 



The river forms the boundary between England and Scotland 

 for some fourteen miles, from Carham down to a point between 

 four and five miles out of Berwick. For the remainder of its 

 course the river is wholly in England, as also is the whole of the 

 Till, an important tributary. In other respects the Tweed is 

 purely Scottish, and since this means 75 miles out of 97 miles 

 of its main channel, and a drainage area of nearly 1,000 square 

 miles out of 1,500 square miles, there is every reason for the 

 generally accepted view that if the Tweed Acts are to be 

 repealed, Scotland rather than England may be fairly expected 

 to accept the responsibility. 



The basin of the Tweed is well defined, and extends from the 

 extreme south-west of the county of Peebles, where the river 

 takes its rise 1,500 feet above sea-level, by the line of the 

 Moorfoot Hills and Lammermuirs on the north, and the 

 Cheviots on the south. The mouth is, as everyone knows, 

 at Berwick-upon-Tweed, a town not only famed in history, 

 but specially identified with the salmon, where annually at 

 least I hope the custom is still kept up the Mayor and Magis- 

 trates open the season in a practical and gastronomic fashion 

 by having an al fresco feast, the chief dish at which is salmon 

 a la Berwick-upon-Tweed. There is no method of preparing 

 salmon equal to the Berwick method, and I am glad it is 

 practised in Scotland as well as in Berwick. 



In the highest part of its course the river flows in a northerly 

 direction, as the Clyde, which is across the hill to the west, also 

 does. At Tweedsmuir the Talla enters, or one may say what 



