in the sporting essays of Christopher North and Stoddart. Even then,
thirty long years ago, the old stagers used to tell us that "the waiter
was owr sair fished," and they grumbled about the system of draining the
land, which makes a river a roaring torrent in floods, and a bed of grey
stones with a few clear pools and shallows, during the rest of the year.
In times before the hills were drained, before the manufacturing towns
were so populous, before pollution, netting, dynamiting, poisoning,
sniggling, and the enormous increase of fair and unfair fishing, the
border must have been the angler's paradise. Still, it was not bad when
we were boys. We had Ettrick within a mile of us, and a finer natural
trout-stream there is not in Scotland, though now the water only holds a
sadly persecuted remnant. There was one long pool behind Lindean,
flowing beneath a high wooded bank, where the trout literally seemed
never to cease rising at the flies that dropped from the pendant boughs.
Unluckily the water flowed out of the pool in a thin broad stream,
directly it right angles to the pool itself. Thus the angler had, so to
speak, the whole of lower Ettrick at his back when he waded: it was a
long way up stream to the bank, and, as we never used landing-nets then,
we naturally lost a great many trout in trying to unhook them in mid
water. They only averaged as a rule from three to two to the pound, but
they were strong and lively. In this pool there was a large tawny, table-
shaped stone, over which the current broke. Out of the eddy behind this
stone, one of my brothers one day caught three trout weighing over seven
pounds, a feat which nowadays sounds quite incredible. As soon as the
desirable eddy was empty, another trout, a trifle smaller than the
former, seems to have occupied it. The next mile and a half, from
Lindean to the junction with Tweed, was remarkable for excellent sport.
In the last pool of Ettrick, the water flowed by a steep bank, and, if
you cast almost on to the further side, you were perfectly safe to get
fish, even when the river was very low. The flies used, three on a cast,