the county of Dumfries, and the home of the wellknown Border family of Johnstone for over 700 years, was brought to the hammer. The attendance was not a large one, and the proceedings opened quietly with the sale of the feu-duties connected with the property, £43 58, which realised £990, or about 23 years' purchase. The auctioneer, Mr Frank, said the right would be exercised to sell in two lots if the property was not sold as a whole, and that after that day there would never be an opportunity of purchasing the estate as a whole, as it would be broken up and sold in lots. He then submitted the whole estate, and the first bid was £50,000. In thousands it went up to £60,000, and then no persuasion could induce the two parties who were bidding to go farther, and the auctioneer bought it in at £80,000. He then offered the Georgefield Farm and Glendinning Farm, over 6991 acres, with a rental of £1154 15s, and for these £24,200 was the highest bid, and these were also retired. The whole estate will, it is understood, now be divided into many minor lots. The parties who were bidding remained anonymous, but were, it is stated, from the vicinity of the estates.

Dr Somerville, Jedburgh, in his "Life and Times," says that his grandfather was presented to the parish of Cavers by the bishop of Glasgow in 1674. The institution did not take place till August, 1675, and was not even then unattended with difficulty and even personal hazard. The following account is from the records of Presbytery: -"At Jedburgh, 7th September, 1675.-This day report was made of the meeting of the Presbytery at Cavers, the 18th day of August; the whilk day the brethren being convened to give institution to Mr Thomas Somerville, conform to the Archbishop his order, and the Presbytery ordinance, they found the church and churchyard door fast shut; whereupon they sent the Presbytery officer to Sir William Douglas (of Cavers) his house to demand the keys; but he could not get access neither to Sir William or his lady; only met with their daughter, whose answer was that no keys were to be had there; so that the brethren were necessitate, without preaching and ordinary solemnities, to give Mr Thomas Somerville institution at the kirk style. Likewise it was ordained that a letter be written to the Archbishop to acquaint his Grace of this affront; and also that when they came to execute his Grace's commands, a number of women were convened in the churchyard, with their laps full of stones, as a guard to keep them out of the church and churchyard; and, besides, that some women railed at us, calling us soul-murderers and the devil's servants."

*

A warlike demonstration was made by the clan Scott in 1596 against the burgh of Peebles, in which Scott of Thirlestane appears to have been the aggressor. Complaint was made to the Privy Council sitting at Holyrood by the Provost, Bailies, Council, community and inhabitants of Peebles, as follows:-" Although they have been in peaceable possession of the lands of Kademuir past memory of man, Robert Scott of Thirlestane, assisted by his friends, has lately begun to trouble

them in the lands foresaid, intending by open oppression to debar them from the same. Thus the said Robert, accompanied by a number of his friends in arms, came upon the 18th and 19th of February last to the said lands, yokit his plewis thairintill, and tellit ane grite part thereof, of purpois and intentionn be this intrusit possesseoun to acclaim the richt and title of the saidis landis to himself. Again the said Robert (and others) with convocation of the lieges, all armed with jocks, spears, hagbuts, pistolets, and other weapons came to the complainers' servantis and ploughmen who were tilling their proper landis, and thair with braid axes and swerdis, they cuttit fyve plewis pertening to the inhabitants of the said burgh, and efter the cutting thereof they came in hostile and weirlyke manner to the portis of the said burgh, and with bendit pistollettis and uthir armis persewit the said is complenaris of thair lyveis and would have slain thame, wer not God in his mercy presavit thame. The molestation continues daily, so that the complenaries for fear of their lyves dare not repair furth of the said burgh." Thirlestane and his associates did not appear to answer to the charge, and were ordered to be denounced rebels.

To the traveller who visits different parts of the country, nothing is more remarkable than the association of certain names with particular districts. Willie Wastle, the hero of a well-known song which makes special reference to Tweedside, is usually supposed to have been a fictitious character; yet the uncommon surname recently figured in the obituary list of a well-known Border paper. Bowmaker is another name which suggests a Border origin. The Rev. Dr Bowmaker of Duns, who was a contemporary of Robert Burns, is described by the poet as a man of strong lungs and pretty judicious remark, but ill-skilled in propriety, and altogether unconscious of his want of it." On the occasion of a recent visit to the Cornish town of Penzance (writes a correspondent) I was surprised to see the name flourishing on a sign-board; but on tracing the genealogy of the worthy shopkeeper, I found that his grandfather had migrated from Berwickshire about a hundred years ago!

On the occasion of a recent chance meeting with the town drummer of Linlithgow, Lord Rosebery is reported to have remarked that he had previously considered the time-honoured office one that had long been obsolete. A still more unique distinction attaches to the Nithsdale burgh of Sanquhar, where the office of town piper is still perpetuated. In view of the widespread notion that pipe music was once peculiar to the Highlands, it may surprise many to learn that in the good old days every Lowland burgh numbered a piper among its officials. At Jedburgh the office seems to have been a hereditary che, as it was held by the family of Hastie for upwards of three hundred years. The last of this line to render musical services to the old Border town passed away during the opening years of the nineteenth century.

DOMINIK SAMPSON,

HUNTER'S TRYST.

A LINK WITH SCOTT AND HOGG.

UNTER'S TRYST, at one time much frequented by Edinburgh citizens, and noted as a frequent resort of the athletic society of young men forming the Six Feet High Club, is a picturesque corner in the neighbourhood of Colinton. Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg were members of this club and visitors at the wayside inn. Most of its members ex

footers," Hunter's Tryst had the reputation of being haunted, and by some was thought to be the scene of Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd." On examination, however, it does not lend itself to the beautiful pastoral.

The neighbourhood is classic ground since the last of the famous romancists. R. L. Stevenson resided here, and was wont to ramble in the fields and over the heather slopes of the overshadowing Pentland Hills.

There is also a striking scene in Stevenson's St Ives" located here. After leaving Swanston, the author's home, St Ives,

ceeded the standard and were popularly known as belonging to the "six footers."

Those were the days when clubs flourished to an incredible number in Old Edinburgh, and were supported by men of respectability and gentlemen of fortune." Mr Walter Scott, W.S., father of Sir Walter, was a member of one, and like "all the lawyers who lived in George Square and the other southern suburbs of respectability," was in the habit of visiting the club every day in passing home from the court.

In addition to being the resort of the "six

drenched and in dreadful pickle, comes upon Hunter's Tryst. Having deciphered the inscription on the sign-board, he was admitted, and found within a company of the tallest lads he had ever seen. He was made a temporary member of the Six Feet High Club and given quarters for the night.

Whilst the historic hedge-row inn does not now attract citizens frae Auld Reekie, or witness the scenes of mirth and merriment, it has an influence in another direction inasmuch as it is a dairy of good repute.

G. M. R.

A ROMAN FRONTIER TOWN.

0 grasp the system of the Roman Empire men rightly study the organisation and activity of those great provincial cities which have left many memorials behind them. But the little towns that stood precariously near the edge of the Empire also had their place in the system; it was they that took the barbarian in hand when he made his first suspicious approaches to the civilisation that was to make a man of him. They therefore deserve to be remembered by us in Northern Britain, none the less so that written history has kept no record of them.

Neither Roman historian nor poet as a rile mentions such places with any of that ereumstance which indicates curiosity. Rome had no Kipling. She had created a civilisation uniform and expressive of her, and wherever she went she built it up about her like four familiar walls within which to guard her selfpossession and do her business undisturbed, She did not want to get away from herself. A Roman of the centre did not visit the strange, little, half-barbarous places near the frontier unless he were a soldier or a trader. What was out of the way and unknown meant simply discomfort to him and either profit or a duty. It give him no thrills.

In the Antonine Itinerary" one of the stations on the road that ran north from York is named Corstopitum. It is mentioned in no other Roman book we know of, yet it was a considerable place in its day, it had a long and adventurous history, and more than one Emperor had walked about its streets. For us it has a particular interest, because its fortunes varied with the changing phases of the Roman occupation of Scotland.

It stood on the north bank of the Tyne a little west of modern Corbridge, on a slope above a bridge which served the great road running inland over the Cheviots to Newstead and beyond. For three centuries it lived a precarious life behind the frontier, and at last, when the barbarians were forcing the northern defences, its people abandoned their home. Its ruins were searched for treasure and robbed for building stone. In Hexham Priory, in Corbridge Church, in many buildings hereabout, you can see the stones that men carted from this Roman town till they had stripped it to its bones.

The archæologist is now uncovering what is left in order to piece the remaining fragments together, and refigure Corstopitum as it was in the days when all this region lay within the Empire. Excavation has shown that the site during its long occupation was repeatedly built over, destroyed, rebuilt. That argues a series of vicissitudes which cannot be completely unravelled until the whole area has been explored. But pick and spade have already supplied the makings of a story.

When Agricola invaded Caledonia in 80 A.D. he laid out the great north road over the Cheviots, and to guard the bridge that carried his road across the Tyne he built a fort. Some poor traces of it have now been recovered a pit or so, a ditch, some coins and broken pottery; there was a large find only last Monday. How long it held out in the doubtful days that followed Agricola's recall it is hard to say, but it cannot have survived that great revolt of Northern England in which the Ninth Legion was destroyed. had always been an unlucky legion.

It

Hadrian re-occupied Corstopitum and built a granary there to provision the troops engaged along his wall, but it was not till the reign of Pius that it became a place of consequence. In 140 A.D. Lollius Urbicus made Corstopitum his store base when he led his troops into Scotland to draw his vallum between Forth and Clyde. He added a second granary; a slab, which had once adorned its south front, records that it was built by the Second Legion under his command. At the same time a beginning was made with that great store-house which was, and is, the glory of the place. It is an acre in extent, and its massive bossed masonry is the stoutest Roman thing that has been found in Northern Britain. Round this centre a population of traders and such-like soon gathered; Corstopitum grew into a town, and a variety of small objects has survived to tell of its civihan life. But there is no sign of liberal living to match its ample buildings; it was an official town, and a semi-military discipline kept it simple.

A gap in the series of coins shows that this period of its life came to an end some 40 years later, when the Caledonians came down from the North about the beginning of the reign of Commodus. The fortresses of Northern England were soon restored, but the troops were now withdrawn from Scotland, and the importance of Corstopitum declined. It revived for a moment when Severus was at work along the Wall, and while he was carry