190 SALMON FISHING IN THE TWEED 



Thus you see how a large fish may manage us. 



I must tell you that the above-mentioned Robert 

 Kerse has long been a distinguished character on 

 the Tweed. At a secluded spot, where the woods 

 and rocks dip down to the margin of the river, and 

 where its current is opposed by a rocky barrier 

 through which it has worn its way in frightful 

 gorges, the gaunt figure of Auld Rob of the 

 Troughs has been seen any time these forty years. 

 He is very tall and bony, and when working his 

 boat with the canting pole amongst the rapids, or 

 looking down on the water from a jutting rock 

 with his leister aloft ready to strike, he cuts a most 

 formidable Salvator-Rosa-like appearance. Rob is 

 now highly seasoned with the saltness of time, 

 being nearer eighty than seventy years old ; drinks 

 whisky like water, his native element ; and to this 

 day runs after the hounds, when they come near, 

 like a boy of fifteen. He is a genuine lover of all 

 sports, and has begot numerous sons and daughters : 

 of the former four are gamekeepers and fishermen 

 on Tweed, Teviot, and Ettrick, to the Duke of 

 Buccleuch, Lord Lothian, and Lord Home. They 

 are remarkable as claiming a regular descent from 

 Saxon ancestors in the most remote times, and are 

 an active, athletic, clean-limbed race of men, keen 

 of eye, and swift of foot, of good pluck, and alto- 

 gether amphibious, loving the heather and moun- 

 tain flood better than the street and servants' 

 hall. Stalwart men would they have been in a 

 Border foray had they lived in the time of Johnny 

 Armstrong. Such and so great are the Kerses ; but 

 they will not go down to posterity like the Purdies, 



