And now we begin to open up the wilder part of Tweed's valley, where not so many years ago you might go a long way, and for miles see no human being but a passing shepherd. It is different now, in these days when motor-cars, leaving behind them a trail of dust as ugly as the smudge of a steamer's smoke low down on the horizon, rush along what used to be the finest of old grass-grown coach-roads, smooth as a billiard-table and free from any loose metal--swept bare now to the very roots of the stones by the constant air-suction of passing cars. But even now, in the winter-time, when the rush of the tourist troubles no more, if one trusts oneself in these wilds, there is a reward to be gleaned in the fresh, inexpressibly _clean_ air, and in the sense of absolute freedom that one gains. You have-left civilisation and its cares behind; here is peace. And in the great hills lying there so solemn and still, black as blackest ink where the heather stands out against the wintry grey sky, or deep-slashed on their sides with heavy drifts of snow from the latest storm, there is rest to the wearied soul and the tired {357}mind. And if the day be windless, what sweeter sound can anywhere be heard than the tinkling melody of innumerable burns blending with the deeper note of Tweed? Nowhere in the world, as it seems to me, is there any scene where Nature lays on man a hand so gentle as here in Tweedsmuir. It is all one, the season; no matter if the air is still, or the west wind bellows down the valley, life is better worth living for the being here. And the glory of it, when snow lies deep over the wide expanse, and the sun shines frostily, and Tweed, black by contrast with the stainless snow, goes roaring his hoarse song seaward! All burns up this part of the valley used to teem with nice, fat, lusty yellow trout--Stanhope Burn, Polmood, Hearthstane, Talla and Gameshope, Menzion, Fruid, Kingledores (with its memories of St. Cuthbert), and the rest. Doubtless the trout are there still, but most of the burns are now in the hands of shooting tenants, and the fishing, probably, is not open to all as of old. Talla and Gameshope (of which more anon) are now the property of the Edinburgh Water Trust Commissioners, and a permit from them is necessary if one would fish in these two streams or in Talla Reservoir.