WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 



had remarked to himself frequently throughout his 

 passing hours and between the thunder of the lightning 

 trains, ' It 's a' richt wi' the fushin' ; the trouts 'ull be 

 jes' takin' fine up yonder the day.' There was some- 

 thing pathetic about this stranded old angler and his 

 crowded memories. The relation of them, however, 

 together with his ever-abiding professional grievance, 

 the nature of which I never could rightly grasp, must 

 have helped to keep him from wearying in the passive 

 sense, if not in the active one, as he proved something 

 of a terror to the softer-hearted wayfarer. 



Now, the Whiteadder rises high up on the northern 

 brink of the Lammermuirs. From the top of the high 

 heath-clad ridge, whence spout its infant springs, you 

 look out over the noblest prospect in Scotland. Not 

 the widest perhaps, nor assuredly from a superficial 

 point of view the grandest, though in truth it is both 

 wide and grand enough. But for its significance in 

 things that matter, that stir the heart and quicken the 

 pulse, there is nothing in the Highlands, the Scotland 

 of the tourist and the hotel-keeper, the ghillie, and the 

 sporting lessee that can approach it, for it covers 

 the very heart of the northern kingdom which in the 

 days of old so infinitely outweighed in all that signified 

 its great half-civilised * back country,' if the term is 

 permissible. Below lie spread the rolling plains of 

 Lothian, the finest farmed country in the world, 

 melting away into the massed upstanding heights that 

 mark the site of Edinburgh. And shimmering beyond 

 is the whole length and breadth of the Firth of Forth, 

 washing on its further shore from end to end the entire 

 southern bounds of the ancient kingdom of Fife. 



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