The following is the French prisoner's description of Selkirk: "The town is encircled by beautiful hills on all sides: in the centre it had a large square adorned with a fountain; a very fine bridge crossed the Ettrick. An ordinary-looking building belonging to the National Church and a much larger one owned by the Presbyterians, or rather the sect known by the name of Anti-Burghers, who had for their pastor an excellent and venerable man named Lawson, were the only two buildings in Selkirk worthy of notice."
The hills are still beautiful; perhaps, owing to extensive tree planting, more beautiful now than then; still within a step of Selkirk is the purple heather, and the heartsease and blue-bell a-swing in the summer breeze; still on every side the view lies wide and glorious. And even in the winter, when snow first "grimes" the hills, or when the northern blast has wrapped them in its winding sheet, one can gaze, and repeat with heartfelt and perfect sincerity:
"By Yarrow's stream still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way;
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chill my wither'd cheek."
[Original]
"In the centre it had a large square adorned with a fountain." The "square" of Selkirk is, in effect, a triangle, (in which now stands Sir Walter Scott's monument,) but as to the "fountain," I should have doubts; it was probably what used to be called the "Pant Well," whence was drawn water (supplied from the Haining Loch) of a body and bouquet indescribable. "Hoots!" scornfully cried, in later days, an old woman, apropos of a new and irreproachable supply which had been got for the town from another source, "Hoots! It has naether taste nor smell!" Alas! that one should record the fact,—in old days the drainage of the upper town (what there was of drainage in those times, that is to say), fell into the Haining Loch not a hundred yards from the spot where the town's supply was drawn off! And yet people lived in Selkirk to unusually great ages. Our ancestors were hardy persons; but perhaps it was only the very fit who then survived.