River Teviot

“ As we ascend, the water of Teviot becomes more and more foul; varying, when last I shuddered at it, from black to a most unwholesome light blue. It is distressing to see such a fluid flowing through beautiful scenes; and possibly since I mingled my tears with the polluted stream, the manufacturers of Hawick have taken some order in the way of more or less filtering their refuse and their dyes. ”

“ At Newcastle its valley is broad again, with wooded hills on all sides, enclosing the pretty little village and its castle. Put thence to Cardigan it is majestic all the way, zigzagging with glorious curves, and with high, densely-wooded banks in the main. Seen when the tints are on its trees, this part of Teifi’s course makes an enduring mark on the memory. The salmon-fisher who comes once to Teifi here (and it is a prolific river, in spite of the “professionals,” who take heavy tolls at its mouth) will have abundant compensation, even though he have poor sport. ”

“ She hurried down the hill towards a clump of black alders that overhung the river’s brink and unmoored a light canoe hitherto concealed beneath the dark foliage. Placing herself in the bottom, she gave two or three vigorous strokes with the paddle, and shot like a bird up the stream.
As Tahmeroo proceeded up the river the scenery, till then half-pastoral, half-sublime, became more savage and gloomy in its aspect. Huge rocks shot up against the sky in picturesque grandeur; the foliage which clothed them grew dusky in the waning light and fell back to the ravines in dark, heavy shadows. ”

“ TEVIOTDALE, the valley of the Teviot, Roxburghshire, Scotland. In a limited sense the word describes the stretch above Hawick (9 m.) and, in a wider sense, the whole vale, extending in a north-easterly direction from Teviothead nearly to the confines of the parish of Roxburgh, a distance of 23 m. It is sometimes incorrectly used as an alternative name for the shire, much of the area of which, in point of fact, lies outside the Teviot drainage basin. There are numerous points of interest in the dale. ”

“ Our thoughts can then follow no better course than that of the railway from Okehampton to Yeoford Junction, and there abandoning the Exeter train take the one coming up for Barnstaple and North Devon. For then in a very short time you will be upon the banks of the Taw, the chief river of North Devon, where it is yet a modest stream, and keep it quite intimate company till it spreads, a shining estuary, laden with historic memories, into Barnstaple bay. ”

“ When the party were assembled for dinner, Lord Teviot's appointment and consequent departure for Lisbon seemed to be generally known; indeed, so generally, that even Fisherwick ventured to make some dark allusions to it. Mr. G. asked Lady Teviot to thank him for sending her lord on such an interesting little expedition, and by not finding out her headache, nor appearing to think she could be out of spirits, did more for her recovery than Lady Portmore with all her condolences. She was in her greatest glory, and unusually overpowering. ”

“ Man wi' the keel-o-vine," he thundered, "do ye hear that?" (For the benefit of non-Scottish readers it may be necessary to explain that a "keel-o-vine" is a pencil) .
A few miles above Coldstream, after a course of about four and twenty miles, the beautiful little Eden Water joins Tweed. Its capabilities as a trout stream are spoken of elsewhere in this volume, and the little river is now mentioned only to record a tragedy of unusual nature which occurred in it in the earlier half of the nineteenth century. ”

“ Kelso gave bent and direction to his genius.
Like Smailholm, Kelso was “meet nurse for a poetic child”, for here join two “superb rivers”—Tweed and Teviot—each bringing down, from a hundred sources, its treasure of ancient story. As we have said, the beauty and romance of Tweedside do not begin in this neighbourhood. They are the endowment of the main stream from its tap-root to 12 the sea. Berwick-upon-Tweed, for centuries a cause of contention between the Kingdoms, was at one time regarded as separate and apart from each—“England, Scotland, and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed”. ”

“ They who know only its coasts, though they know them well, may walk delicately, for of much that is most characteristic of its loveliness they are altogether ignorant. But anyone who has tracked a typical Devon river from its fount high up on the wild and lonely moorland to the estuary where it mingles its waters with the inflowing tide, following it as it brawls down the peaty hillsides, and winds its way through glen and gorge until it gains the rich lowlands where it rolls placidly towards its latter end, may boast that his is the knowledge of intimacy. ”

“ There is no doubt about the Tavy by the time it has swallowed the Rattle Brook and a few streams of lesser importance, and has entered the cleave which it has carved through the granite by its own endless erosion. It is an exceedingly self-assertive river; passing down with a satisfied chuckle in the hot months, when the slabs of granite are like the floors of so many bakers' ovens ”

“ The Tawe cannot be much more than twenty-five miles in length, from its source in the lakelet on the Brecknock Van, or summit, of the Fforest Fawr Mountains, to the Swansea Docks. As fully half its course is through a colliery district, it may be supposed that its claims to beauty cannot be of the strongest. But the Neath river has taught us that these South Wales streams cannot be judged thus summarily. One must, therefore, proceed up the long valley of Tawe in the hope of charms other than those that emanate from pit-gear, long chimneys, and factories. ”

“ People accustomed to the monster mile-wide Mississippi, grow accustomed to associating the term "river" with a high degree of watery grandeur. Consequently, such people feel rather disappointed when they stand on the shores of the Humboldt or the Carson and find that a "river" in Nevada is a sickly rivulet which is just the counterpart of the Erie canal in all respects save that the canal is twice as long and four times as deep. One of the pleasantest and most invigorating exercises one can contrive is to run and jump across the Humboldt river till he is overheated, and then drink it dry. ”

“ It is a shabby world to live in, but I do not mean to let the worshippers of the rising sun who took me up drop me again easily. So I shall go down to Portsdown. I suppose Teviot is not the sort of fellow to come down handsomely with a few thousands because I withdraw my claims. Is he? ”

“ For Tweed then so overflowed its banks that burn and river joined beside the spot where Merlin lies, which, as Dr. Pennecuick says, "was never before observed to fall out, nor since that time."
Over against Drummelzier, Biggar Water falls into Tweed, and a curious circumstance about this stream is this, that "on the occasion of a large flood... the Clyde actually pours a portion of its water mto one of the tributaries of Tweed." The whole volume of Clyde at Biggar, says Sir Archibald Geikie, could without any difficulty be made to flow into Tweed by way of the Biggar Water. ”

“ Away down yonder, they have driven two rows of piles straight through the middle of a dry bar half a mile long, which is forty foot out of the water when the river is low. What do you reckon that is for? If I know, I wish I may land in—hump yourself, you son of an undertaker!—out with that coal-oil, now, lively, lively! And just look at what they are trying to do down there at Milliken's Bend. There's been a cut-off in that section, and Vicksburg is left out in the cold. It's a country town now. The river strikes in below it; and a boat can't go up to the town except in high water. ”

“ But many of us will dream rather of chalk-streams in Devon, of the rippling amber-yellow flood of Derwent in the Peakland valleys, of Tweed and Teviot, of slow streams among woods and bright rivers going like cold flame through wide straths and lowlands: of small narrow waters whose very names are wedded to beauty and to ‘old, unhappy, far-off things,’ Otterbourne, the Water of Urr, the Water of Quair, Allan Water. Above all will some of us think of those peat-stained bracken-dyed burns, that leap and dance and sing down the steep ways of rock and heather in the Scotland of our love. ”

“ The last 2 m. of its course before reaching Berwick are in England. The Tweed is 97 m. long and drains an area of 1870 sq. m. Its bed is pebbly and sandy, and notwithstanding discolorations from manufactures, the stream, owing to its clear and sparkling appearance, still merits the epithet of the "silver Tweed." The river, however, has no estuary, and traffic is chiefly confined to Berwick, though for a short distance above the town some navigation is carried on by barges. The Tweed is one of the best salmon streams in Scotland. ”

“ Another Indian said, that it meant Large-Bay Lake, and that Sebago and Sebec, the names of other lakes, were kindred words, meaning large open water. Joe said that Seboois meant Little River. I observed their inability, often described, to convey an abstract idea. Having got the idea, though indistinctly, they groped about in vain for words with which to express it. Tahmunt thought that the whites called it Moosehead Lake, because Mount Kineo, which commands it, is shaped like a moose's head, and that Moose River was so called "because the mountain points right across the lake to its mouth." ”

“ Fill that whole region with an impenetrable gloom of smoke from a hundred miles of burning bagasse piles, when the river is over the banks, and turn a steamboat loose along there at midnight and see how she will feel. And see how you will feel, too! You find yourself away out in the midst of a vague dim sea that is shoreless, that fades out and loses itself in the murky distances; for you cannot discern the thin rib of embankment, and you are always imagining you see a straggling tree when you don't. ”

“ Dryburgh Abbey lies on the Tweed, about four miles from Melrose. You turn off—when you have left the Eildon hills on your right, and have seen on your left, in the course of the river, the Cowdenknowes, Bemerside, and other classic spots—down a steep and woody lane, and suddenly come out at a wide bend of the river, where, on your side, the gravel brought down by the floods spreads a considerable strand, and the lofty banks all round on the other are finely wooded. Few are the rivers which can show more beautiful scenery in their course than the Tweed. ”

“ They fancy, poor deluded creatures, that they miss you dreadfully, and that no one can fill up your vacant place. Strange illusion! which my august presence will instantly dispel. After I have raised their spirits to their proper pitch, it is just possible that I may raise my own, by coming to see my little Nell; so tell Teviot to expect me, and to turn his attention towards partridges and pheasants." There was a third letter in a hand-writing Lord Teviot did not know. "Am I to read this, Helen?" ”

“ The dwellers along the banks of the Tweed are quite familiar with the fact that the roads which run parallel with the river are smooth and level, for they coincide with the trend of the ridges and hollows; whilst those that cross the country at right angles to this direction must of course traverse ridge after ridge, and are therefore exceedingly uneven. In this low-lying district most of the ridges are composed of superficial deposits of stony and gravelly clay and sand, and the same is the case with those that sweep round the north-eastern spurs of the Cheviots by Coldstream and Ancroft. ”

“ At the border of the Desert lies Carson Lake, or The "Sink" of the Carson, a shallow, melancholy sheet of water some eighty or a hundred miles in circumference. Carson River empties into it and is lost—sinks mysteriously into the earth and never appears in the light of the sun again—for the lake has no outlet whatever.
There are several rivers in Nevada, and they all have this mysterious fate. They end in various lakes or "sinks," and that is the last of them. Carson Lake, Humboldt Lake, Walker Lake, Mono Lake, are all great sheets of water without any visible outlet. ”

“ Not remarkable in the scenic way, for a more nearly level stretch of very often flooded meadow lands you will not see for miles. The site of Tewkesbury is close upon, but not actually on, the confluence of England’s greatest river, the broad and turbid and rather grim Severn, with the Avon. All around, but in grey and blue distances, are hills: the Cotswolds, the Bredon Hills, the greater Malverns, and the yet greater, but more distant Welsh mountains; but the Severn and the Avon flow through levels that extend considerable distances. ”

“ Ascending by the dry bed of a torrent on the south side of the river, we skirted the eastern end of Jibel Teluet, which forms the southern boundary of the valley, and descended some four miles farther on to the larger stream of the Wad Unila. The ascent and descent we had crossed forms a small watershed for the tributaries of the two rivers, though apparently these mountain torrents only flow in the wet season. At one spot, rather more than half-way, we passed extensive salt-mines, where quite a number of natives were engaged in working rock-salt. ”

“ We arrived at the cataract of Theotonio about mid-day, after being very nearly swamped in the rough water below the fall. The river widens out at the foot of each one of the principal rapids, and in the case of the Theotonio, the greatest fall on the river, the bay is of very considerable size. The water here is always in a more or less agitated state, from the effect of the principal fall, which is about twenty-six feet in height, and when the wind blows up stream, [42] the waves rise so much that canoes run great danger of being swamped. ”