Morning journal and courier., 1890-08-23

era of as profitable smuggling, whose
headquarters were in the sheltering port.
Somehow the broad, cool, shaded, silent
streets and deserted wharf-sides recall Sa-
lem town, on our New England coast, and
| its flavor of romance wheu the old skip
pers sailed home with their wondrous
riches, and curiosities, not always peace
fully got in the Indies, East and West; and
the Annanites will match Salem's Gallows
Hill with its old castle site and its dark
deeds of valor and blood; in place of
Salem's custom house and the desk where
the gentle Hawthorne toiled, they will
bring you to old academy, now a stately
residence, where Carlyle once was schooled,
and where he was afterwards its master in
mathematics; and for Salem's memories of
Mather they will recall for you the won
derful career of that inspired and holy
man, Edward Irving, whom, for living too
closely to his nivine model, the stern old
Presbytery degraded from holy orders;
and then they will take you to the little
house in Butt street, Fish Cross, where he
was born, and over whose door the simple
inscription, cat this house Edward Irving
was born on the 4th of August, 1892. He
left neither an enemy nor a wrong behind
him, viii lsremain Through time a bright
ening epitome OF endless fame, while those
who broke his sanity life and heart will
Leading from Amman to the English side
of the Solway is a vast railway viaduct
one and one-half miles in length. One
cannot resist the temptation to cross this
into rock-girt Cumberland; for at its
southern approach is one of the oldest lit
tie villages along che whole English bor-
der This is Bowness. 1t consists of one
long compactly-built street, perched up
there above the wild Solway tides like an
eagles nest secur9y hung upon some crag
edge, out-jutting above sea-swept preci-
pice. What brave old houses have these
Bowness folk; every one solid as a castle.
Like the Lochmaben people who trans
formed the mighty castle of the Bruces
into matter-of-fact habitations and i'm
pregnable cow-sheds, the inhabitants of
Bowness secuted the further utility of an
cient Roman walls, and as the most stu
pendous one in Britain ended here, it was
in good time transformed into huge-walled
houses. with here and there in their hard
facades a weird old Roman altar, by way
of unconscious history and grim, asser-
tive witness of primitive iconoclasm.
These people of the Cumberland border
are fishermen and statesmen" The lat
ter term applies, in the two northwest
counties of England, Westmorland and
Cumberland, to those who farm their own
land, if it does not exceed a half acre in
area; and lands have descended for centu-
ries in the same families. Some are both
Statesmen and fishermen; and all are
descended from century old line of men
who could equally well turn their hands
to the plough, to smuggling, to the tempo
rary bloody trade of moss-troopers, or to
the nets. And it was not so very long ago
that salmon were so plentiful in the Sol
way that servants engaging to masters on
the English or Scottish side of the Firth
stipulated that ''salmon or other fish
should not be given them oftener than
three days in the week" Strange, quiet,
od-fearing souls these Bowness folk,
with giant frames and wondrous height;
eyes and leonine heads of fiaxen hair; and
with dumb, sodden, speechless ways to the
| end, which brings them at last from be-
hind the Roman affairs of their sturdy
home walls to the drear old church yard,
| dug out of the fosse where once the NIGH
| ty Roman defenees stood Tarrying or
| going, one may well say of all .Bowness
| folk:
Here are the quaint old homes with the quaint
old hearts,
Where life to ali is measured in three parts;
A simple way: The birth, the toll, the rest
| But a certain alertness of attention, an
IL
| ing as it were, true of every man, woman
and child on both sides of the Firth, dis
4 closes that the tide is coming up from ths
Irish sea. These folk will tell you they
/ can hear it twenty miles away. Long be-
1 fore this, if you are standing on the cliff
edge, you will see the fishers, waist deep
| in water, hurrying on the tightening of
their upright nets, which for ten miles be-
| low seem like tiny fences of rush; and
away seaward with your glass you can see
them scurrying up from the ebb slime and
sands towards safety and the shore. Then
| to your Impractical ears come the faint
| reverberations of hoarse roar; and soon.
| like pillar of flame in the play of the
sunlight the great mist-banner of the ad-
| vancing waters is flung from Scotland to
England, almost from Criffel to Silloth,
| and moves toward you like a lurid cloud
above a running battle. In few mo
| ments more the brilliancy of the phenom-
enon is greatest. Preceding the advan-
cling cloud along the seething front of a
wall of water five miles wide, glitter,
foams and misses bank of spume and
| spray, zoned, trimmed and interlaced with
| tiny rainbows. The roaring of the bel
/ lowing water-hosts becomes deafening.
| For an instant You are enveloped by the
cloud That passed, while You thrill with
| the mystery and awful grandeur of the
/ spectacle, the great tide-head is abreast of
| you, a true tide-bore, such as breaks ma
| iestically into Minas and other estuaries of
the Bay of Fundy, cylindrical and straight
as an arrow across the Firth, and from sin
to eight feet in, height, which sweeps past
with below and shrek like that of an
hundred thousand coast fog-horns bowling
in unison; while close in its wake is &
| hillocky, tempestuous mass of waves bril-
liantly gorgeous in fitfully swept prisma
tic colors-and the Solway tide is in.
Some English tramps were singing fol
their breakfasts before the doors of the
grave Scottish villagers at Ecclefechar
when tramped into the hamlet behind
them. There were FIVE of them, great
hdlking fellows, and their hoarse and ag
gressive believing was the only sound in
dicatiye of human life in the village, even
at that late hour of the morning. They
stood beside a melodious burn which
dashed from under a covered way and
coursed on through the village street. Al
one side of the stream was an ancient
wall On the other were struggling houses
and the one before which the vagabonds
lifted up their narrowing voices was ons
of the plainest and quaintest in Ecclefe
chan. From its appearance it might hay'
been an olden stable; sn abandoned lodg'
| at the entrance to some gentleman's estab
l-lishment formerly located behind it; o.
the ancient jail of the village, now smart
ly whitewashed ahd transformed into
lowly habitation. 1t was a mite of a thin
with an archway through it occupying
one-third of the lower story. AT eacl
side was narrow oaken door, and, neare
each end, a tiny window. In the secon
story, another little window, above eac
lower one, looked into the street; and owe
! the center of the archway were two sti
more diminutiye windows, side by side
1t was double house of the dwarf yarie
ty, and the one at the north end, wher
) the strong-l Hinged sorners sang, was tn
birth place of Thomas Carlyle.
The believing had brought mute
) capped guidwives to various windows an
alley entrances at safe distances. / lo
tered near enough to hear them discus
the matin song of the tramps well q
the house and its former occupants.
s'They medina fash (trouble) theirsel
tae sing theirs" croaked one old dame wit
!, gentle swaying of her head betokening
reminiscential vein of remark. ssThe
: mecht roar theirsels black i the face, afol
! they'll draw bluid frae that neep (tul
. nipi'0
"Oh, ave." crooned a still older old W,
i man, stits weel kent nae puir body i've
! saw, syne or soon, the recht side o. Ii
3 Carlyles' sillerl"
: How Carlyle's adorers would ha,
n groaned to heA these his old neighbors {
e on, One limited at their pride witt
Y ssThey thocht theirsels ma sheep shanks
r Another of their torift with, ssThsy nee
It selld their hens on a rainy day. Anotl
q | ar Of ,,,isorliupss with lsThav rraa ,l,a