ridges, chiefly from the south-west to the north-east, and between the ridges we note that there is enclosed in each a scooped-out glen, in which we know that a burn. or water flows. These hill-tops follow each other in wavy outline. One rises, flows, falls, passes softly into another. This again rises, flows, and passes into another beyond itself; and thus the eye reposes on the long soft lines of a sea of hills, whose tops move and yet do not move, for they carry our vision along their undulating flow, themselves motionless, lying like an earth-ocean in the deep, quiet calm of their statuesque beauty.

Near us are the heads of the burns, and the heads of the glens, which, on the one hand, run northward to the Tweed, and on the other southward to the Yarrow. Here, at one burn-head, we have deep, peaty bogs, out of which ooze black trickling rills; there, at another, we have a well-eye, fringed with bright mosses, and fair forget-me-not of purer hue and more slender form than any that the valley can show. The burn gathers strength and makes its way down through a deep red scaur and amid grey-bleached boulder-stones; then, overshadowed by the boughs of a solitary rock-rooted birch, leaps through a sunny fall to a strong, deep eddying pool. At length it reaches the hollow of the glen, where it winds round and round, amid links of soft green pasture, amid sheen of bracken and glow of heather,-passes a solitary herd's house-the only symbol of human life there— now breaks against a dark-grey opposing rock, then spreads itself out before the sunlight in soft music amid its stones. Finally, leaving the line of hills that shut in the glen on each side, the stream mingles with one of

the waters of the south, or with the Tweed itself on the north of the central range of mountains.

2

either The

Most of

This central mountain of Broad Law, or Braid Alb as it was formerly called,' commands a view of nearly the whole Border-land of Scotland. The hills, the dales, the waters of this district are all before you distinctly to be seen or capable of localisation. eye can sweep from Nithsdale on the west to the dales of Yarrow, Ettrick, and Teviot on the south and east. The long blue line of the Cheviots, called of old the Montes Ordeluci, bounds the southern horizon. The farstretching valley of the Tweed is before you. the incidents and the struggles of Border, even national story, are borne on the names of the district within your ken. Follow the line of the Tweed from its source in Tweed's Well, a little to the south-west, not far from the historic Tweed's Cross, and note the names. There is the wild moorland of Erickstane, dividing the Tweed from the Annan, where the good Sir James of Douglas first met the Bruce, and joined hands with the man by whom. he stood until the national independence was secured. There farther down the valley is Oliver Castle-the Castrum Oliveri of the twelfth century recalling its feudal lord, Sir Simon Fraser, the hero of Roslin, and the unwavering friend till death of William Wallace. Then there is the now ruinous line of old castles and peelsflanking the banks of the river, and eyeing each other from their knowes all along the valley from the Bield.

1 See Armstrong's Map.

2 Ferchius, Vita Joannis Duns Scotus, 1: Bononiæ, 1622- "Montes Ordeluci, vulgo Cheviot, ubi olim Pictorum regnum."

to Berwick, ready of old to flash the warning beaconflame over a hundred miles of country, and speaking yet of countless local deeds and raids, of the old rough life with its heroism, faithfulness, tenderness, its love and sorrow. Along that far - stretching line of river-flow" the Flood of the Tweed," as it is called in the Border laws-stand out, if not all to the eye, at least to the memory, the fortresses of Neidpath and Traquair, Wark, Norham, and Berwick; and the stream on its way passes the battle-fields of Melrose and Halidon Hill; and there over in Yarrow is Philiphaugh, with Minchmuir, that lent its old bridle-path for the flight of Montrose. In Teviotdale, which you see in the dim distance holding up before you Penchryse Pen, the Paps, and Windburgh, are the battle-fields of Hadden Rig and Ancrum Moor, with the storied castles of Roxburgh and Branksome. And away in the far south-west, behind the faint outline of Great Moor, lies Hermitage Castle, in the sweet green valley of the Hermitage Water, with its memories of the gruesome fate of its lord De Soulis in the cauldron on the Nine-stane Rig, of the Dark Knight of Liddesdale-the flower of chivalry of the coarse Bothwell, and hapless Mary Stuart. And on a tolerably clear day you can descry from this summit of Braid Alb the long unbroken line of the Cheviots, with the Carter Fell for centre, as they run eastwards to Wooler, bearing down into the valley of the sluggish Till the spur on which Flodden was fought. These and many more that might be named are the historic places of mediæval Scottish story—all lying in the landscape before you that stretches from the Tweed to

the English march-some of them of bright, others of gloomy memory, as one may see from this high top of Braid Alb, on a varying summer day, a mountain-face happy in a glint of sunshine, while beyond on its compeer there falls the darkening shadow from the cloud.

25

CHAPTER II.

ANCIENT REMAINS, AND ORIGINAL INHABITANTS.

THE question arises: What of the people who lived in the past in this district? Were they of more than one race, and if so, what were those races ?

With this point in view, we may look first at the oldest and rudest relics of human work in the district,possibly the dwellings and forts of the original and successive tribes.

Of these we have at least three distinct classes. We have, first, the "Forts," generally curvilinear, of the lower hills and knowes,-sometimes in the plains. We have, secondly, the Ringed Enclosures of the ancient morasses and the lowest hill-slopes. We have, thirdly, the Motes or Moats. These all refer at least to human uses.

The most numerous and the most perfectly preserved remains on the hills of the Border Lowlands are those works variously known as camps, forts, or rings. Popularly and most erroneously they are designated Roman,— a title to which they have absolutely no claim. We have Roman remains, even camps, but these are of a wholly different character.

Those forts or mounded