Not all merrie are the records of Carlisle! And to-day you will find the castle has suffered change. You enter through an ancient gateway, and there is still the portcullis adorned with a sadly battered piece of sculpture. Unsightly barracks, and so forth, cumber the outer ward. The half-moon battery is dismantled, and the great keep is now used as an armoury. You turn to the cathedral, and there, spite of many alterations and more or less judicious restoration, there is much to admire. We can but mention the splendid central window at the east end of the choir, the graceful arcades below the windows of the side aisles, and the carved oak work of the stalls. * * * * * At the head of the Solway Firth the /Sark/, a small river, or rather "burn," which in a dry summer well-nigh vanishes, divides the two kingdoms. On the Scots side the first village on the road is Gretna Green, famed for just over a century because of its irregular marriages. Here we might take leave of England were it not that our next two rivers, the Esk and the Liddel, Scots for most of their course and rising at very different points, finally meet and pass into Cumberland, whence they flow into the Solway Firth; the Esk having made a complete circuit round the Sark. The Debatable Land already mentioned was the piece of ground between the Solway and the junction of the two streams, of each of which we must now speak. [Illustration: CARLISLE, LOOKING EAST.] [Illustration: CARLISLE, LOOKING WEST.] * * * * *