• cpoys (pies), cream, and milk cheese, all in perfection.
And so much simplicity resides here among these hills; that a pen,. which could write at least; was not to be found- about the house, though belonging to a considerable farmer, till I shot the crow with whose quill I write this epistle."
Eicept that the lower farms are more carefully cultivated, and that here and there a railway station lies at the month of the long valleys, the green sides of the Cheviots have altered not at all since Sir Walter enjoyed his visit to the home of the farmer early in the last century. The one great Change which substituted peace for war and happiness for rapine was the Union, after which, though not till some time had elapsed, the steep and verdant sides of these lovely hills were covered with the innumerable flocks which, while 'the Border raiding lasted, Were too easy a prey to he kept so near the Tweed. "The Northumberland Sheriff,"' says- Roger. North in his Life of the Lord Keeper Guildford, "gave us all arms, that is, a dagger, and a knife, and a penknife; and a fork all together," apparently the equivalent for the modern luncheon basketwhen making a journey through the district not much more than two hundred years ago.
There is nothing like the Cheviote among English hilla---or mountains, for the two loftiest summits ire 2,676 ft and 2,347 ft. high respectively—any more than there is any river • quite like the Tweed, or any fortified eity alike so striking and so full Of tragic -history as Berwick with its threatened walls. The hills are no chain, like the Pennines, but a repetition of green mounts, or "pikes," as they would be called in West- morland, rising from narrow flat valleys, in strings of separate mounts, divided sharply by tiny leaping burns and becks, astonishingly green, almost from base to summit, and covered and dotted from foot to top with the white-woolled and horn- less Cheviot sheep. In the early days, when pastoral life first -became possible there, the Scotch "heather sheep" weretfed -upon these mountains. But the pasture proved almost too good for them, and the white and hornless "Cheviots" have mow invaded even the Highlands, feeding on the "betwixt and .between" lands where the low ground has ended, but the heather has not yet conquered the grass herbage of the lower mountain-sides.
Following the waters of the bright trout stream called the "College Beck" (the name has nothing to do with a seat of learning), the visitor or angler finds himself in just such sur- roundings as Sir Walter Scott enjoyed in his early visits to the land of the Green Mountains. Far up the valley lies the farm of Heathpool, and beyond it to the sources of the river nothing but the natural features of these remote secluded hills. Heathpool, like all the farms of the region, keeps in its arrange- ment the traditions of immemorial antiquity. The "unit'- of this country, so long a scene of rapine and foray, and where few villages and no towns ever grew up, was the homestead, which was always fortified, and around or in which lived the servants of the owner. Now the fortifications are seen no longer, except on the ancient sites ; but every -farm has its 'group of "quarters" for the workmen beside it, rows of small houses brought together, like a miniature street, in which the wives and families of all those whose labour maintains the farrn live close beside their master's house.
All up the valley, all over the hills, are dotted the sheep and lambs. The farmers count their flocks by the thousand. But in spring, at least, they seem to need no more care than if they were grazing on the Delectable Mountains. For miles above the farm towards the close of May the wild, yet fertile, valley was one sunlit Eden, in which birds and beasts were dwelling without care, neither "afraid with any amazement." The river, in the rains a rushing flood strewing the valley with broken, cubes of rock, was coursing thin and low in its stone-grey bed, but full of lively little trout with golden bellies and the brightest scarlet fins. Colour seems the natural environment of the Cheviot range, and to be imparted in an intenser hue than is common, not only to its herbage, but to the flowers, and even fishes.
On either side the river lies, in place of the smooth meadows of the lower valley, a rock-strewn flat, set in about equal pro- portions with grey crags and masses of furze. In this year of prodigal blossom the furze has outvied even the apple and the thorn with its masses of orange and gold. For mile after mile the narrow valley is sheeted with the furze blossoms, hiding both stems and thorns. The whole air is odorous with its scent, as the warm wind breathes down its narrow channel, rolling before it the cocoanut fragrance over rocks and young ferns and the emerald slopes of the abutting mountains. Between these green walls the furze winds, like a golden river, .washing the bases of the everlasting bills. Still further- up. the stream, where every trace of man has disappeared, the hillsides advance almost to the waters of the river. It is the peculiarity of the Chebviots that they have few ledges or breaks in their ascents. The mountain slope rises almost at the same angle, and without a break, from foot to summit. At this point in the College Valley the sides are set with small but ancient oaks and scattered thorns, and there, among these primitive trees, self-sown on the mountain-side, appeared grazing a herd of the most primitive of all animals, shaggy and half-wild goats. These goats are to all intents wild animals, but they are not shy, though, true to their ancient instinct, they keep to the steep sides of the hills, and leave the valleys to the sheep. In colour they are black and white, all, from the bearded patriarch who leads the flock to the skipping kids, apparently sharing the same marking and distribution of colour. These are probably the most southerly of the feral goats left in England, though they abound in Wales, and are found on Achill Island, off the West Coast of Ireland. On the Scotch hills near Forres a few
goats are said to lead an independent existence on the moors, the belief being that they kill snakes—i.e., vipers—and are therefore in a sense protectors of the lambs. At what time the goat disappeared from use as one of the regular beasts of the farm in England does not seem to be known. But when the Essex "Doomsday" was compiled flocks of these animals were noted as belonging to the different properties, especially those which had feeding rights upon the salt marshes.
Over the tops of the loftiest heights the cap of heather creeps a little way down the slope. But as a rule the summits are rounded and grassy, though bearing in places rare upland flowers and sedges. It seems to-day nothing less than laughable that these heights should have inspired terror, mainly of the unknown, but not the less real, among persons venturing on the ascent shortly before the " romantic " period, when they began to be looked upon as picturesque. Even the poet Gray heartily disliked mountains, and pulled the shutters of his carriage up when travelling through the Alpine passes, though in his admirable account of his visit to the English Lakes his appreciation of the scenery is both deep and rational. But Defoe, who ventured among the Cheviots, says of "one Pico or Master Hill, which at a distance looked like the Pico Teneriffe in the Canaries" :— "As we mounted higher we found the hill steeper than at first, also our horses began to complain (!) and draw their haunches up heavily, so we went very softly. However we moved still and went on until the height became really frightful, for I must own that I wished myself down again We were the more uneasy about mounting higher because we all had a notion that when we came to the top, we should be quite as upon a pinnacle, that the hill narrowed to a point, and we should only have room enough to stand, with a precipice every way round us, and with these apprehensions we all sat down upon the ground and said we would go no farther."
The burns or becks which run in the" cracks" between the green hills are in their way even more beautiful than the main river. They often form the only division between the two steep and lofty slopes, the bases of which would otherwise touch. Following the course of one of these leaping becks, the explorer finds himself in a few minutes lost to view of the valley, and shut in away from every other sight and sound but the two green slopes, the dancing, flashing stream, the sheep and lambs, and the innumerable birds. The curlews are calling up on the mountain-side, little sand- pipers whistle and call incessantly and run almost at his feet, and the ring-ouzels, who rarely see man up these secluded rills, sit "dipping" on the stones, and care not to move. On one of these burns is a miniature waterfall so perfect in its form that it might stand as a model for all waterfalls what- soever. The waters leap some eight feet over a curving lip,into a circular basin, with rocky sides, and chiselled shelves of stone. From these hang trailing plants and long tapestries of moss, each lappet tipped with a glistening bead of dew. The crest of the basin is fringed with eglantine, and over all droops an ancient thorn, under whose canopy of white blossom the ring-ouzels sing their song to the spirits of the mountain and the stream.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
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