We found Peebles a most interesting place, and the neighbourhood immediately surrounding it was full of history.  The site on which our hotel had been built was that of the hostelage belonging to the Abbey of Arbroath in 1317, the monks granting the hostelage to William Maceon, a burgess of Peebles, on condition that he would give to them, and their attorneys, honest lodging whenever business brought them to that town.  He was to let them have the use of the hall, with tables and trestles, also the use of the spence (pantry) and buttery, sleeping chambers, a decent kitchen, and stables, and to provide them with the best candles of Paris, with rushes for the floor and salt for the table.  In later times it was the town house of Williamson of Cardrona, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries became one of the principal inns, especially for those who, like ourselves, were travelling from the north, and was conducted by a family named Ritchie.  Sir Walter Scott, who at that time resided quite near, frequented the house, which in his day was called the “Yett,” and we were shown the room he sat in.  Miss Ritchie, the landlady in Scott’s day, who died in 1841, was the prototype of “Meg Dobs,” the inn being the “Cleikum Inn” of his novel St. Ronan’s Well.

[Illustration:  THE CHURCH AND MONASTERY OF THE HOLY CROSS, PEEBLES, AD 1261.]

There was a St. Mungo’s Well in Peebles, and Mungo Park was intimately associated with the town.  He was born at Foulshiels, Yarrow, in the same year as Sir Walter Scott, 1771, just one hundred years before our visit, and, after studying for the Church, adopted medicine as his profession.  He served a short time with a doctor at Selkirk, before completing his course at the University of Edinburgh, and sailed in 1792 for the East Indies in the service of the East India Company.  Later he joined an association for the promotion of discovery in Africa, and in 1795 he explored the basin of the Niger.  In 1798 he was in London, and in 1801 began practice as a doctor in Peebles.  He told Sir Walter Scott, after passing through one of the severe winters in Peebleshire, that he would rather return to the wilds of Africa than pass another winter there.  He returned to London in December 1803 to sail with another expedition, but its departure was delayed for a short time, so he again visited Peebles, and astonished the people there by bringing with him a black man named “Sidi Omback Boubi,” who was to be his tutor in Arabic.  Meantime, in 1779, he had published a book entitled Travels in the Interior of Africa, which caused a profound sensation at the time on account of the wonderful stories it contained of adventures in what was then an unknown part of the world.  This book of “Adventures of Mungo Park” was highly popular and extensively read throughout the country, by ourselves amongst the rest.

[Illustration:  THE BLACK DWARF.]