122 DAYS AND NIGHTS CF SALMON FISHING. 



lovely in its native charms. What stranger just emerg- 

 ing from the angular enclosures of the South, scored and 

 subdued by tillage, would not feel his heart expand at 

 the first sight of the heathery mountains, swelling out 

 into vast proportions, over which man has had no 

 dominion ? At the dawn of day he sees, perhaps, the 

 mist ascending slowly up the dusky river, taking its 

 departure to some distant undefined region; below the 

 mountain range his sight rests upon a deep and narrow 

 glen, gloomy with woods, shelving down to its centre. 

 What lies hid in that mysterious mass the eye may not 

 visit; but a sound comes down from afar, as of the 

 rushing and din of waters. It is the voice of the Tweed, 

 as it bursts from the melancholy hills, and comes re- 

 joicing down the sunny vale, taking its free course 

 through the haugh, and glittering amongst sylvan 

 bowers, — swelling out at times fair and ample, and 

 again contracted into gorges and sounding cataracts. — 

 lost for a space in its mazes behind a jutting brae, and 

 reappearing in dashes of light through bolls of trees 

 opposed to it in shadow. 



Thus it holds its fitful course. The stranger might 

 wander in the quiet vale, and, far below the blue sum- 

 mits, he might see the shaggy flock grouped upon 

 some sunny knoll, or straggling among the scattered 

 birch trees; and, lower down on the haugh, his eye per- 

 chance might rest awhile on some cattle standing on a 

 tongue of land by the margin of the river, with their 

 dark and rich brown forms opposed to the brightness of 

 the waters. All these outward pictures he might see 

 and feel; but he could see no farther: the lore had not 



