very fine,--at one's feet, just beyond the two rivers, "Cannobie lea"; "There was mounting 'mong Graemes of the Netherby clan, Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran, There was racing and chasing on Cannobie lea, But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see." A short way farther down the Esk is Netherby, headquarters of that clan whose peel towers once dotted this part of Cumberland and all the Debateable Land, and who in the early seventeenth century were so hardly used by James VI and I. They were no better, I suppose, than the others of that day, but they were no worse, and the story of their banishment is not very pleasant reading. Lord Scrope believed that the Grahams were "privy" to Buccleuch's rescue of Kinmont Willie, and certainly the Grahams did not love Lord Scrope, who, I suppose, was not likely to present the clan in a very favourable light to Queen Elizabeth. Their reputation, in any case, became increasingly black, and James I, when he came to the throne, issued a proclamation against them. In fact, the dog was given an exceedingly bad name--not of course wholly without cause--and hung; or, rather, many of their houses were harried, their women and children turned out to fend for themselves in the wet and cold, and their men shipped off to banishment in Ireland and in Holland. Certainly, in driblets they made their way back to their own country again, after a time--those who survived, that is,--but their nests had been harried, their broods scattered down the wind, and, as a clan, their old status was never regained. As has already been told, Netherby was the site of a Roman station, and it is rich in evidences of the old Legions--coins, altars, and what not. The original peel at Netherby--which still forms part of the present mansion--I take to have been such another as the Graham tower of Kirk Andrews, its near neighbour, which stands--still inhabited--just across the Esk, perched on a rising ground overhanging the river. {417}From a sporting point of view at least, the Esk here is a beautiful stream, famous for its salmon, which are plentiful and often of great size. [Illustration: 0437]