3?2 Report of Meetings for 188G. By J. Hardy. 



The knightly quality and this sublimed 



Above mere strength, and all that makes rude power, 



Has grown and blossomed in aesthetic sense ; 



And where dark deeds were done on steeps of Scrape, 



Writ poetry of pine and birken shaw, 



And yet has loft wild nature free to mix 



The heather bloom, pure as the ancient hills, 



With spreading boles of stately forestry." 



The Tweed, etc., pp. 22, 23. 



The two estates of Stobo Castle and Dawyck on opposite sides 

 of the Tweed, so approximate, that we could see the Missel 

 Thrushes issuing' out of a lower place in the woods to gain a 

 higher position, and then sallying forth again in their restless 

 manner. 



Above us after issuing from the woods is the immense Stobo 

 Slate Quarry, now unwrought. Princes Street in Edinburgh 

 was partly covered with slates from it. Thus Pennicuik speaks 

 of it: "Upon the hill above, the famous Skailly Quarrie, called 

 Stobo Slait, belonging to Sir David Murray of Stankop. Trans- 

 ported far and near for covering of the houses of the nobility 

 and gentry, and making a light and beautyful roof." 



Drevah or Drevach, a farm place on our left — Sheriff Russell, 

 who one year rented the house, informs me — has the foundations 

 of a peel within the precincts of the steading. Formerly Drevah 

 had a Tweedie as its owner. Beyond it is a great quarry at the 

 base of a green bulky hill of considerable height, named Drevah 

 Crag, where there is an old fort or keep, possibly based on an 

 old British hill fort. Of it Mr Blackwood says : " None of the 

 walls remain, but there are great heaps of stones. Local tra- 

 dition says that an underground passage exists between this 

 castle and Tinnies Castle." The hill is rough with fern clumps 

 and broken by the inecpialities of its surface. Near the road the 

 grey wacke rocks appear to have been ground and battered down 

 by glacial action. 



As we look round we have now before us — Tweed escaped 

 from its natal hills, and winding free through the expanse of 

 Drummelzier haugh ; the green boggy strath of Biggar water 

 bespeaking a lowlier origin ; and glimpses of the vale of Holms 

 water revealed by streaks of sunlight beyond intervening ridges. 

 Here lies Glencotha where Henry Scott Riddell first felt the 

 poetic impulse. We can follow the Biggar water by the cultured 

 slopes up towards Broughton, where finally the towering 



