A SUMMER RAMBLE ON CHEVIOT. 55 



luxuriantly, becoming scant and dwarfed, and mixed with 

 the golden leaves of the bleaberry-ling, the whortle-berry, 

 and the creeping heath. For the last few hundred feet the 

 vegetation is so stunted as to resemble a great soft mossy 

 carpet, as easy to the tread as those of Turkey, though 

 perhaps not so smooth, since strewn broadcast on it lie 

 patches of the dark grey rocks porphyry, dolerite, and 

 granite. The actual summit is a broad flat plateau, perhaps 

 half a mile in extent. Bleak and wild-looking, the plateau 

 is only half-clothed with coarse bent and cotton-grass, inter- 

 spersed with barren mosshags, oozy peat-flats, and ravines. 

 The small white flowers of the cloud-berry (Rubus cami- 

 morus), a plant which only flourishes at altitudes of some 

 2,000 feet, were a relief to the monotony of barrenness, 

 together with tufts of Lycopodium and the trailing shoots of 

 the crowberry. The Alpine Cornus Suecica also grows at 

 one spot here a very rare British plant, only found on 

 Cheviot and on one other of the northern fells. The only 

 birds seen on the summit (2,676 feet) were a Grouse or two 

 none nest so high a few Golden Plovers, and a charm- 

 ing sight quite a small colony of Dunlins. There were five 

 or six pairs of this graceful little wader, all breeding together 

 among some moory tussocks, and extremely tame, perching 

 within a dozen yards. We sat and watched them for some 

 time with the binocular pretty little chestnut- striped birds, 

 with a black patch on the breast. 



On a bright, clear day the view from Cheviot amply repays 

 the labour of the climb up. The eye ranges over a pano- 

 rama of wild mountain land. Looking northward across the 

 fertile vale of Tweed, with glimpses here and there of its 

 silver thread, the horizon is bounded by interminable Lam- 

 mermnirs. The triple crests of the Eildons, above Melrose, 

 are prominent objects to the west, while all the succession of 

 rolling fell ranges along the Border are clearly distinguish- 

 able. In the far-away distance the steam of a train in the 

 "Waverley route" seems incongruous, so we turn south- 

 ward. Here, too, there are hills nothing but hills. Kelso 

 Cleugh and the Windy Gyle, the broad contour of Shillmoor, 

 and, close at hand, the rival peak of Hedgehope, whose 



