Highways and Byways in the Border: IllustratedLang, Andrew
History
Highways and Byways in the Border: Illustrated
Lang, Andrew
Scottish Borders (Scotland) -- Description and travel
Let him climb, in the peaceful evening light, to the top of the red
and precipitous Braeheads behind the long single street of St. Boswells
Green, pleasantest of villages, and there gaze his fill at the beautiful
Abbey far beneath his feet, sleeping amongst the trees across the river.
Or let him go farther still, up by the leafy path that overhangs the
rushing water, till he come to the little suspension-bridge. And let
him stop there, midway across, and face towards the western sky and the
three peaks of Eildon that stand out beyond the trees clear-cut against
the warm after-glow. At his feet, mirroring the glory of the dying day,
a broad shining sweep of quiet water broken only by the feeding trout;
on his left hand, high in air the young moon floating like lightest
feather; above the fretful murmur of some far-off stream, a bird piping
to his mate. And over all, a stillness that holds and strangely moves
the very soul. I think that if there be one with him attuned to his
mood, an hour may pass and the gloaming have deepened almost to dusk,
and neither of them shall have spoken a word, or noticed that the time
has sped. And still they will linger, unwilling to break the spell.
At Leaderfoot the river is crossed by two stone bridges, one, the lofty
naked viaduct of the Berwickshire Railway; the other, older and more
pleasing, carries the picturesque road that, breaking out from the leafy
woods of Drygrange and leaving on its left hand the hallowed site of Old
Melrose, leads past St. Boswell's Green and the Kennels of the Buccleuch
Hunt, over by Lilliard's Edge to Jedburgh. Between, and immediately
above, the bridges at Leaderfoot are some glorious salmon casts, where
nigh on a century ago Scrope was wont to throw a fly. Strange that
during twenty years, in all that magnificent water fished by him, from
Kelso to Caddonfoot, he never once landed a salmon of thirty pounds,
and but few as heavy as twenty. There may have been more fish in his
day,--one cannot judge; they got more, but then they took them not
only with fly, but by "sunning" and by "burning" the water, and by many
another means that now is justly considered to be poaching. But they
seldom caught a salmon approaching in weight those which are now
commonly taken in Tweed every season. Thirty pounds is a weight by no
means noticeable now-a-days, and scarcely a year passes that fish of
forty pounds and over are not taken by some fortunate angler; even above
Melrose cauld, an obstruction that checks the ascent of many big fish,
they have been got, far up the river, as heavy as thirty-eight pounds.
Floors Water, at Kelso, I believe holds the record as regards size; in
1886 a fish of fifty-seven and a half pounds was captured. And as to
numbers, though it is of course possible to labour for a week or more in
Tweed--as elsewhere--even with the water apparently in good order, and
with plenty of fish up, fresh from the sea, and meet with no manner of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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