A BORDER TOWER 245 



But the charm of Tweed fishing does not rest 

 alone on the sport. Every hillside, every haugh, is 

 associated with some story of Border chivalry, 

 and is full of memories to one who takes the trouble 

 to learn the simple lore. When Washington Irving 

 first visited Abbotsford, and Scott took him to the 

 top of the Delectable Mountains to view the wide- 

 spread glory of Lammermuir, Torwoodlee, Ettrick 

 and Teviotdale, he could hardly believe that this 

 was the actual scene of enchantment. 



' I gazed about me,' he wrote afterwards, 'for a time with 

 mute surprise, I may almost say with disappointment. I 

 beheld a mere succession of grey, waving hills, line beyond 

 line, as far as my eye could reach, monotonous in their 

 aspect, and so destitute of trees that one could almost see 

 a stout fly walking along their outline ; and the far-famed 

 Tweed appeared a naked stream, between bare hills, 

 without a tree or thicket on its banks. And yet such had 

 been the magic web of poetry and romance thrown over 

 the whole, that it had a greater charm for me than the 

 richest scenery I had ever beheld in England.' 



It is true that had we never been drunk of the cup 

 of Scott's romance, the hills that tower so grandly 

 in his lays might have remained for us but geolo- 

 gical pimples, the vaunted merse but indifferently 

 drained meadow ground, the grey peles of Smail- 

 holm and Earlstoun but inconvenient, rudely built 



