
BANKS OF THE TWEED AND SOME OF ITS TRIBUTARIES. 515 
The neap tide comes up the river to the Chain Bridge, about 5 miles from 
Berwick, and the spring tide about 2 miles higher up. 
The banks of the river along its course differ in height and in distance 
from one another, as in most rivers. 
Where the river passes between hard rocks, the banks are high, the width 
between them small, and the stream generally deep ; when not deep, it is rapid. 
Where the river passes through soft strata,—such as marl, clay, gravel, or 
sand,—the banks are low, with a greater width of stream. 
The terraces or flats noticeable along the course of the river, exist chiefly on 
the kind of banks last described. The stream wears away and undermines 
detrital materials more easily than rocks ; so that marks are most frequently on 
a. of detritus. 
. The first flat or terrace with its bounding cliff ee I notice, is the 
om in level, and therefore the most recent. 
The base of this cliff was reached by a flood which occurred on 9th February 
1831. It has not, since that date, been again reached. 
There had previously been two floods in the memory of persons still alive— 
one called the Roller Flood,* and the other, the Berwick Fair Flood,—neither, 
so remarkable as that in 1831. 
The fact of this flood of 1831, having risen higher than any previously known, 
accounts for the circumstance that, at about twenty different places between 
Melrose and Berwick, individual proprietors, apparently without mutual con- 
cert, thought it right to mark, some by stones, others by brass plates, the 
precise height to which the flood reached on their lands or houses. 
The following table indicates the height above the present ordinary summer 
level of the river, to which the flood of 1831 rose. 




Places. Height. Remarks. 
Feet. 
Berwick, : 15 Pointed out by harbour master, 
New Water Haugh, , : 13 Given by gardener, being a mark made on a tree. 
Whitadder Mouth,t . tile b2Zsor 13 Base of lowest visible cliff. 
Whitadder, Canty’s Bee 12 Do. do. 
Gainslaw, ; : 19 Water rose up two steps of lobby in farm-house. 


* T have not learnt in what years, these two previous floods occurred. The Roller Flood takes its 
name from the circumstance that a large wooden roller for farm purposes, lying on Leeshaugh, near 
Coldstream, was lifted by the flood, carried down to the mouth of the river, and stranded on Spital 
beach. Having been recovered, it was sent back to Lees. Probably this flood occurred in October 
1797, the year in which Kelso Bridge was swept away. 
The Berwick Fair Flood is supposed to have occurred in the month of May,—that being the 
month of the principal fair at Berwick. Myr Jerrrey, in his “History of Roxburghshire,” mentions 
that a flood occurred in the Teviot in the year 1846, which was greater than that in 1831. In the 
Tweed, this flood did not rise so high as that in the year 1831. 
{ Near the junction of the Tweed and Whitadder, a considerable change has visibly taken place 
in the course and levels of both rivers. The Ordnance Survey Map indicates that the Tweed below 
