TINWALD DOWNS TO HALLHEATHS. 341 



Take Plate, by half-a-neck. Oddly enoug;h_, a lad 

 called Wilkin rode tlie loser, and then Mr. Wilkin's 

 mares Kackel and A'enus were left with the Leices- 

 ters in undisturbed possession. 



Such were the experiences of our saunter out of 

 Dumfries, and once more we were in the saddle, and 

 away towards quite a different point of the compass 

 up the Valley of the Nitli. There is very little wheat 

 in the valley, which opens up after Auld Garth. Dun 

 ponies seemed to be most plentiful, and a boy 

 informed us that " they were a^ strippit doon the back 

 — King o' the Country always gat them that way : 

 ye^ve heerd tell on Mm surely V' which indeed had 

 not. They seemed a good sort, though perhaps not 

 a model for the flying horse which surmounted the 

 town cross in the centre of the long lime avenue of 

 Thornhill. The loam and the gravel vary all the 

 way along the valley of the Nith ; but on referring 

 to a map at Holstane, we found that after pur- 

 suing the east side we were ^' in an oasis of the new 

 red sandstone, in the midst of a huge bed of lime- 

 stone extending from Port Patrick to Dunbar,^^ and 

 slept none the less soundly for the discovery. The pos- 

 session of the hills which began to flank us on the 

 right, fivemiles outof Dumfriesis pretty evenly divided 

 between the black and "the pale faces'^ or the Che- 

 viots. The latter hold Closeburn Town Head, which 

 dies away in that arable valley below Low Garth, 

 where half-bred lambs are got ready for Lock- 

 erby. Blackfaces wander over Bellybucht, which 



