NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 67 



of the following catastrophies : — We should either have been capsized 

 over a heap of earth, thrown up out of a drain in the road, a few yards 

 further ; or comfortably landed, as Paddy says, amongst the wild ducks 

 in the lake, in about two fathom 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. Camp- 

 bell, any where but in a post-chaise." 



Despairing of seeing hounds over Berwickshire on the powerless 

 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 Cornhill for the purpose of see- 

 ing 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 constructed 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 



K 2 



