The "peat-hag" is a characteristic not only of the Scottish Border-land, but of wide tracks on the English side, and a very remarkable feature it makes in a wild landscape, being a sort of black precipice made in the green hills by some sudden sinking of the apparently bottomless peat. It is all ancient peat-land together where the river Coquet rises--"Coquet, still the stream of streams," as one of the poets of "The Fisher's Garland" has observed; "the king of the stream and the brae," as has been remarked by another poetical brother of the angle. Other northern rivers the fisherman mentions with respect, and perhaps with joyful remembrance of pleasant and successful days; but of the Coquet he never speaks except with glowing enthusiasm. No tuneful fisher who was friendly with the muse ever failed to give the Coquet a preferential mention in his verse. Now it is-- "Nae mair we'll fish the coaly Tyne, Nae mair the oozy Team, Nae mair we'll try the sedgy Pont, Or Derwent's woody stream; But we'll awa' to Coquet side, For Coquet bangs them a'." And now it is-- "There's mony a saumon lies in Tweed, And many a trout in Till, But Coquet--Coquet aye for me, If I may have my will." A much beloved stream, indeed, is the Coquet, rising in an acre or two of marshy land, losing itself for a while among the peat, then winding into the sunlight round the feet of the green hills, and--after many a mile of joyous wandering--plunging into deep embowered woods and mossy thickets, where, to all but its familiars, it is unsuspected and unseen. All around Coquet Head lies the Debatable Land. Mounting the dark hill of Thirlmoor one may look far away over Roxburghshire, whence, in former rough times, there was many a raid into the rich Northumbrian lands. The district known as Kidland lies along Coquetside, from the Cheviots eastward, and here in the stormy moss-trooping days no soul could be induced to live, even if he were tempted by the offer of free lands. The hills are now covered with sheep; there is a shelter for the shepherds on the top of Thirlmoor; yet to this day Kidland is a country bare of habitations, shrouded for great part of the year in mists; dank, rainy, treeless; swept by fierce winds, treacherous by reason of its numerous bogs. The wild duck may be shot at Coquet Head, but for the most part it lives and breeds here in great safety, too remote from men, too fortunate in its wild surroundings, to be much or frequently incommoded by the English enthusiasm for sport. It is possible, perhaps, to be in as deep a solitude on Dartmoor, but scarcely possible to be so far from the musical church bell and the cheerful cottage smoke.