“Was never scene so sad and fair!”

After seeing the home and favorite haunt of Scott, we felt a wish to stand by his grave, but we had Ancrum Moor to pass before night, and the Tweed was between us and Dryburgh Abbey.  We did not wish to try another watery adventure, and therefore walked on to the village of Ancrum, where a gate-keeper on the road gave us lodging and good fare, for a moderate price.  Many of this class practise this double employment, and the economical traveller, who looks more to comfort than luxury, will not fail to patronize them.

Next morning we took a foot-path over the hills to Jedburgh.  From the summit there was a lovely view of the valley of the Teviot, with the blue Cheviots in the distance.  I thought of Pringle’s beautiful farewell: 

    “Our native land, our native vale,
       A long, a last adieu,
     farewell to bonny Teviot-dale,
       And Cheviot’s mountains blue!”

The poet was born in the valley below, and one that looks upon its beauty cannot wonder how his heart clung to the scenes he was leaving.  We saw Jedburgh and its majestic old Abbey, and ascended the valley of the Jed towards the Cheviots.  The hills, covered with woods of a richness and even gorgeous beauty of foliage, shut out this lovely glen completely from the world.  I found myself continually coveting the lonely dwellings that were perched on the rocky heights, or nestled, like a fairy pavilion, in the lap of a grove.  These forests formerly furnished the wood for the celebrated Jedwood axe, used in the Border forays.

As we continued ascending, the prospect behind us widened, till we reached the summit of the Carter Fell, whence there is a view of great extent and beauty.  The Eildon Hills, though twenty-five miles distant, seemed in the foreground of the picture.  With a glass, Edinburgh Castle might be seen over the dim outline of the Muirfoot Hills.  After crossing the border, we passed the scene of the encounter between Percy and Douglass, celebrated in “Chevy Chase,” and at the lonely inn of Whitelee, in the valley below, took up our quarters for the night.

Travellers have described the Cheviots as being bleak and uninteresting.  Although they are bare and brown, to me the scenery was of a character of beauty entirely original.  They are not rugged and broken like the Highlands, but lift their round backs gracefully from the plain, while the more distant ranges are clad in many an airy hue.  Willis quaintly and truly remarks, that travellers only tell you the picture produced in their own brain by what they see, otherwise the world would be like a pawnbroker’s shop, where each traveller wears the cast-off clothes of others.  Therefore let no one, of a gloomy temperament, journeying over the Cheviots in dull November, arraign me for having falsely praised their beauty.