It is a distance of nine miles between the village of Cockburnspath and Dunbar, the road going parallel with the sea all the way. First it goes dizzily over the profound rift of Dunglass Dene, spanned at a height of a hundred and twenty-five feet above the rocky bed of a mountain stream by the bold arch of the railway viaduct and by the road bridge itself. It is a scene of rare beauty, and the walk by the zigzagging path among the thickets and the trees, down to where the sea comes pounding furiously into a little cove, a quarter of a mile below, wholly charming. Away out to sea is the lowering bulk of the Bass Rock, a constant companion in the view approaching Dunbar.
The direct road for Edinburgh avoids Dunbar altogether, forking to the left at Broxburn where the battlefield lay, where the burn still flows across the road as it did on the day of “Dunbar Drove,” as Carlyle calls that dreadful rout. Here “the great road then as now crosses the Burn of Brock. . . . Yes, my travelling friends, vehiculating in gigs or otherwise over that piece of London road, you may say to yourselves, Here, without monument, is the grave of a valiant thing which was done under the Sun; the footprint of a Hero, not yet quite indistinguishable, is here!”
Ahead, with its great red church on a hillock, still somewhat apart of the south end of the town, is Dunbar, the first characteristically Scottish place to which we come. It is not possible to compete with Carlyle’s masterly word-picture of it, which presents the place before you with so marvellous a fidelity to its spirit and appearance:—“The small town of Dunbar stands high and windy, looking down over its herring-boats, over its grim old castle, now much honeycombed, on one of those projecting rock-promontories with which that shore of the Firth of Forth is niched and vandyked as far as the eye can reach. A beautiful sea; good land too, now that the plougher understands his trade; a grim niched barrier of whinstone sheltering it from the chafings and tumblings of the big blue German Ocean.” There you have Dunbar.
Let us add some few details to the master’s fine broad handling; such as the fact that its streets are wondrously cobble-stoned, that those whinstone rocks are red and give a dull, blood-like coloration to the scene, and that the curious old whitewashed Tolbooth in the High Street is the fullest exemplar of the Scottish architectural style. Windy it is, as Carlyle says, and with a rawness in its air that calls forth shivers from the Southron even in midsummer. Here the stranger new to Scotland is apt to see for the first time the sturdy fishwives and lasses who, still often with bare feet, go along the streets carrying prodigiously weighty baskets of fish on their backs, sometimes secured by a leather strap that goes from the basket around the head and forehead!
One leaves Dunbar by wriggly and exiguous streets, coming through the fisher villages of Belhaven and West Barns to where the main avoiding route rejoins at Beltonford. The Scottish Tyne winds through the flat meadows on the right—at such fortunate times, that is to say, as when it does not pretend to be an inland sea and take the meadows, the road, and the railway for its province. The road, too, is flat, and the railway, which hugs it closely, the same. A good road, too, and beautiful. Midway of it, towards East Linton, are the farmsteads and ricks of Phantassie, at which spot Rennie, the engineer who built London Bridge, and heaven and Dr. Smiles alone know how many harbours, was born in 1761. “Phantassie” is a name that sorely piques one’s curiosity, so odd is it; but the group of farm-buildings is commonplace enough, if more than commonly substantial. No fantasy in their design, at any rate.
At East Linton we cross the Tyne which, crawling through the meadows, plunges here in cascades under the road bridge, amid confused rocks. The railway crosses it too, close by, and spans the road beyond; and the village huddles together at an angle of the way. A long ascent out of it commands wide views of agricultural Haddingtonshire, and of that surprising mountainous hill, Traprain Law, rising out of the plain to a height of over seven hundred feet.
Not merely a surprising hill, but one with an astonishing story. It had always been thought that treasure was buried there, among the traces of ancient buildings; and accordingly, with the permission of Right Honourable A. J. Balfour, on whose land the hill is situated, excavations were begun in 1919. It was found that the hill-top had been inhabited intermittently over remote periods, and diggings were made into successive strata of hearths and floorings. At first the “finds” were of minor articles: bronze ornaments, glass and pottery, fragments of iron, mostly of Celtic origin, but some Roman. The great discovery was made on May 12th, 1919, when a workman, driving a pick through a floor, brought up a silver bowl on the point of it. A deep recess was then discovered, filled with treasure: bowls, spoons, cups, saucers, and a miscellaneous collection of plate, mostly cut to pieces in strips folded over and hammered down into packets of silver. Although it was grievous to look upon that destruction, a good many of the fragments retained their original decoration. They appear to be partly of Romano-Christian origin, for the sacred symbol occurs among them, and on one piece is the inscription “Jesus Christus.” Other pieces are almost as certainly pagan, hearing as they do figures of Pan and Hercules. Among them were four coins: the earliest of the Emperor Valerius, whose reign began A.D. 364, and the latest of Honorius, who died A.D. 463. A metal belt of Saxon character was among this treasure-trove.
It appeared, therefore, that this hoard was a relic of one of the sea-rovers’ raids on this coast in the fifth or sixth century, and that the spoils had in some cases come from plundered religious houses. The raiders were perhaps disturbed in their activities, and buried their loot in the expectation of returning for it at some more suitable time.