106 THE SHEEP. 



ant for twenty years after the storm ; and when at length 

 one very honest and liberal-minded man ventured to take a 

 lease of it, it was at the annual rent of * a great-coat and a 

 pair of hose !' It is now rented at L.500 a-year. An ex- 

 tensive glen in Tweedsmuir, now belonging to Sir James 

 Montgomery of Stanhope, became a common at that time, to 

 which any man drove his flocks that pleased, arid it continued 

 so for nearly a century." 



He continues : " The years 1709, 1740, and 1772, were 

 likewise all years notable for severity, and for the losses sus- 

 tained among the flocks of sheep. In the latter, the snow 

 lay from the middle of December until the middle of April, 

 and was all that time hard frozen. Partial thaws always 

 kept the farmer's hopes of relief alive, and thus prevented 

 him from removing his sheep to a lower situation, till at 

 length they grew so weak that they could not be removed. 

 There has not been such a general loss in the days of any 

 man living as in that year." 



" But of all the storms that ever Scotland witnessed, or I 

 hope ever will again behold, there is none of them that can 

 once be compared with that of the memorable night between 

 Friday the 24th and Saturday the 25th of January 1794. 

 This storm fell with peculiar violence on that division of the 

 South of Scotland that lies between Crawford-muir and the 

 Border. In these bounds seventeen shepherds perished, and 

 upwards of thirty were carried home insensible, who after- 

 wards recovered. The number of sheep that were lost far 

 outwent any possibility of calculation. Whole flocks were 

 overwhelmed with snow, and no one ever knew where they 

 were till the snow was dissolved, and they were all found 

 dead. I myself witnessed one particular instance of this, on 

 the farm of Thickside : there were twelve scores of excellent 

 ewes, all one age, that were missing all the time that the 

 snow lay, which was only a week, and no traces of them 

 could be found ; when the snow went away, they were dis- 

 covered all lying dead, with their heads one way, as if a flock 



