THE NITH AND ITS TEIBUTAEIES. 65 



CHAPTEE VII. 



THE NITH AND ITS TEIBUTAEIES. 



"As wandering by Nith I wait the dewy eve." 



BtJBNS. 



I HATE not a very high opinion of the Nith and its tribu- 

 taries as angling streams. The population on its banks is too 

 dense, the villages too numerous, weavers and other mechanics too 

 abundant. Still these streams are worth a visit by the angler, 

 who, finding himself in Dumfries, may feel a melancholy plea- 

 sure in wandering by the banks of the river, where mused the 

 immortal lyric bard of Scotland. On Nith-side was he last seen 

 angling. His mind had evidently become disturbed. I do not 

 infer this from his having been found angling, but from the guise 

 in which he showed himself. He wore a huge hairy cap, and 

 had girded on an old rusty claymore. Thus was he last seen on 

 the banks of the Nith. Alas ! 



The angler will find the best station for fishing the upper 

 waters of the Nith, as I shall venture to call them, at the village of 

 Keir, about ten miles from Dumfries. From this he may fish 

 the Nith itself, and two or three of the streams which join it 

 from the south. In one of these Carn, I think a soft and 

 gently flowing stream, running to the south of Ken, through a 

 stiff, loamy, slimy, pipe-clay soil, he will find a peculiar kind 

 of trout at least as to external appearances ; but it is thirty 

 years since I saw it, and cannot speak now with certainty. In 

 the Nith, unless aided by weather and floods, he will catch 

 nothing but parr, which the people about Drumlanrig mistake for 

 young salmon, and the usual river trout, red-spotted and small. 

 But it must be different at other times, when autumnal floods 

 run high ; for hirling and sea trout, and salmon, and bull trout 

 ascend the Nith in considerable numbers, despite the mills and 

 mill-dam of Dumfries. 



This is the country of the treacherous and bloody Kirkpatricks 

 not of Closeburn, for Closeburn does not, nor ever did, belong 

 to them, but to one of the kindest and most hospitable of 



