This was my general view
of the matter. Of particular places, I recollected
that Garval-hill was a famous piece of rough upland
pasture, for rearing young colts, and teaching
them to throw their feet,---that Minion-burn had
the finest yellow trout in the country,---that Seggycleugh
was unequalled for woodcocks,---that Bengibbert-moors
afforded excellent moorfowl-shooting,
and that the clear bubbling fountain called
the Harper's Well, was the best recipe in the world
on the morning after a _Hard-go_ with my neighbour
fox-hunters. Still these ideas recalled, by degrees,
pictures, of which I had since learned to appreciate
the merit---scenes of silent loneliness, where extensive
moors, undulating into wild hills, were only
disturbed by the whistle of the plover, or the crow
of the heath-cock; wild ravines creeping up into
mountains, filled with natural wood, and which,
when traced downwards along the path formed by
shepherds and nutters, were found gradually to
enlarge and deepen, as each formed a channel to
its own brook, sometimes bordered by steep banks
of earth, often with the more romantic boundary
of naked rocks or cliffs, crested with oak, mountain-ash,
and hazel,---all gratifying the eye the more
that the scenery was, from the bare nature of the
country around, totally unexpected.
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