The Western Plain of Cumberland. S3 



Fantail 4th, at nearly the same sum, departed for 

 Scaleby Castle together. And so did most of the 

 company, cheered by the beams of a double rainbow, 

 to buy the descendants of the Elvira or Princess sort 

 on the morrow* 



The blacksmith at the Red Dial warned us that it 

 was " an uneasy road," as we sought Mr. Watson's. 

 The mist was on the Solway, and half veiled Wedham 

 Flow (beloved of snipes) and those salt-marshes on 

 whose edge the natives set fixed engines for salmon, 

 and " stick it out" before the Commissioners that they 

 only aspire to flounders. As we climb the side of 

 Cattland Fell, the great -north-west plain of Cumber- 

 land lies at our feet. " This is the old border land, 

 memorable alike for strife and song. The impress of 

 its troubled history may here and there be seen in the 

 massive square towers, which yet rear their time-worn 

 walls, telling of many a storm and siege." We feel 

 too on another score that we hold the keystone of a 

 strong position. Beyond the Solway, we see the 

 birthplace of Pride of Southwicke in a wooded spur of 



* Scaleby Castle was built about the time of Henry I., or subse- 

 quently by the Norman Tilliolfs, who got a large grant of the adjacent 

 county both as their residence, and also as a place of refuge from the 

 attacks of the marauding Scots of that period. When the sentinel sta- 

 tioned on the "Toot Hill" (now Scaleby Hall) sounded his horn, the 

 people with all haste collected their stock within the precincts of the 

 double moat, or, in case of greater emergency, within the quadrangular 

 courtyard of the castle. The outer moat is still in perfect preservation ; 

 but the inner one has for years been filled in. An old donjon keep 

 rises to a considerable height above the other parts of the building, and 

 has long been an almost inaccessible ivy-clad tower, tenanted only by 

 the bat or the moping owl, while the large black martins wheel in rapid 

 flight, and chase each other with defiant scream round the battlements. 

 The walnut-tree, which spread its lateral arms far and wide, and the 

 gigantic elms which threatened to push the old walls from their founda- 

 tions, have all gone ; but still many a fine gnarled oak holds the ancient 

 keep in countenance. Mr. Fawcett has kept shorthorns of the Princess 

 blood, so famed for the pail, ever since he was under Mr. Bates's roof as 

 a pupil. Of late years he has purchased some high-priced heavy-fleshed 

 cows, chiefly of Bates blood, and he gave 155 guineas for Fourteenth 

 Duke of Oxford at His Grace the Duke of Devonshire's sale. 



G 2 



