NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 157 



you have not done heretofore." Lord Archibald took my advice and was 

 so pleased with the eflfect of it, that he declared he would not take fifty 

 pounds for the advice Nimrod had given him. But it is all nonsense 

 talking about horses not being- able to cross a country in martingals. 

 Who rode straighter than Will Barrow, the late Mr. Corbet's huntsman? 

 Who rode over larger fences ? Who got fewer falls ? and who ever saw 

 him without a long martingal on his snaffle rein ? Indeed, on the very 

 day on which I had offered this advice. Lord Elcho was riding a horse 

 in a martingal, and which horse I heard he afterwards sold to Lord 

 Eglinton, at a good price. 



About twelve o'clock, Williamson arrived from the kennel with the 

 fatal news that no hounds were to be at the bridge ; indeed he had been 

 obliged to wait for a rough-shod horse to bring him to the town of 

 Kelso. What then was to be done? A lounge through Mr. Dickinson's 

 stables was the first step taken by way of killing time, and then a walk to 

 the bridge, to hear the news of the river. But from whom were we to 

 hear it? — not from one of the fifteen salmon we saw basking in its bed, 

 but from the keeper of the toll-bar on the bridge, who had formerly 

 kept a fishing hut on its banks, to which some of the celebrated gentle- 

 men-fishermen resorted. " Who killed the most salmon in one day last 

 season?" (it was now fence time) was the question I put to him. " One 

 squire Musters from England," replied the toll-keeper ; '' he killed nine 

 clean fish." But I have reason to believe there are few better fishermen 

 than Mr. Musters ; and I can produce one fact in corroboration of this 

 assertion which I had from the lips of a friend of his and mine, with 

 whom I spent a day last summer in Calais. " Last year," said he, " I 

 got permission for Musters to fish in some preserved water, near 

 Oxbridge, and where there was one trout of six pounds, in a certain hole, 



