78 FISH AlS'D FISHING- 125" SCOTLAND. 



travelled onwards on foot by the slimy disagreeable banks, my 

 companion suddenly became ill; he could just walk. I felt 

 inconceivably and suddenly exhausted ; but in the sight of one 

 worse than myself, I always recover so much strength, at least 

 as to be able to assist. We turned our steps towards Annan, 

 sitting down often by the road-side to rest, although the distance 

 we had walked that morning was really nothing to us. As we 

 neared the town of Annan, where horse and gig, and dinner 

 awaited us, I looked westward, and beheld a singular pheno- 

 menon. ' Over the locality where I knew Dumfries stood, there 

 shot, from earth to heaven, a dark mist. I could not call it a 

 cloud, it was of considerable breath, it resembled nothing I had 

 ever seen, and the only thing I could compare it to was a vast 

 column of living insects on the wing, hovering over Dumfries, 

 and not unlike one of Turner's latest productions, when 

 despising all colour and form he attempted something original. 

 But that it was a cloud of insects was probably a delusion, or 

 optical deception at least, not impossible, but very doubtful. 

 I wish that the author of the "Historic Doubts" respecting the 

 reign of Napoleon Buonaparte had distinctly perceived, which 

 apparently he could not do, the difference between the possible 

 and impossible, the defeat of great armies by one man, and the 

 cutting through a whetstone with a razor by another.* But to 

 return to the mist over Dumfries. As I gazed until I felt a 

 mysterious awe, and said to my friend that I liked not its appear- 

 ance whatever it might forebode, we were due east of that 

 mist ; so acting on instinct, as I prefer doing when permitted, 

 the horse was ordered, and, in an hour, we were on our road to 

 Lochmaben. 



On ascending the high grounds, by which we cleared the 

 valley of the Solway, my friend got better, long before we 

 reached the lovely banks of the Castle Loch of Lochmaben ; 

 and by next morning, when, rod in hand, and basket ready, we 

 prepared to fish the Annan, the whole circumstance Vras 

 forgotten. 



* Livii Opera. 



