"O, never, since time had birth, Rose from the pregnant earth Gems, such as late have in Scotia sprung;-- Gems that in future day, When ages pass away, Like thee shall be honored, like thee shall be sung! "Then here, by the sounding sea, Forest, and greenwood tree, Here to solicit thee, cease shall we never. Yes, thou effulgence bright, Here must thy flame relight, Or vanish from nature forever and ever!" Such strains as these serve to remind us that we go to visit the native scenes of no common man. To reach Ettrick, I took the mail from Dumfries to Moffat, where I breakfasted, after a fresh ride through the woods of Annandale. With my knapsack on my back, I then ascended the vale of Moffat. It was a fine morning, and the green pastoral hills rising around, the white flocks scattered over them, the waters glittering along the valley, and women spreading out their linen to dry on the meadow grass, made the walk as fresh as the morning itself. I passed through a long wood, which stretched along the sunny side of the steep valley. The waters ran sounding on deep below; the sun filled all the sloping wood with its yellow light. There was a wonderful resemblance to the mountain woodlands of Germany. I felt as though I was once more in a Suabian or an Austrian forest. There was no wall or hedge by the way: all was open. The wild raspberry stood in abundance, and the wild strawberries as abundantly clothed the ground under the hazel bushes. I came to a cottage and inquired,--it was _Craigieburn Wood_, where Burns met "The lassie wi' the lintwhite locks." But the pleasure of the walk ceased with the sixth milestone. Here it was necessary to quit Moffat and cross over into Ettrick dale. And here the huge hills of Bodsbeck, more villainous than the Brownie in his most vindictive mood, interposed. I turned off the good road which would have led me to the Gray-Mare's-Tail, to the inn of Innerleithing (St. Ronan's Well), and St. Mary's Lake on Yarrow, and at Capel-gill forsook Moffat water and comfort at once. And here, by the by, as all the places in these dales are called gills, and hopes, and cleughs, as Capel-gill, Chapel-hope, Gamel-cleugh, etc., I may as well explain that a hope is a sort of slight ravine aloft on the hillside, generally descending it pretty perpendicularly; a cleugh, a more deep and considerable one; and a gill, one down which a torrent pours, continuing longer after rains than in the others. At least, this was the definition given me, though the different terms are not, it seems, always very palpably discriminative.