‘We proceeded with difficulty up the rocky chasm to reach the foot of the waterfall. The passage which the stream has worn by cutting the opposing rocks of grey-wacke, is rough and dangerous. My brother George and I, both in the prime of youth, and constantly in the habit of climbing, had difficulty in forcing our way, and we felt for Scott’s lameness. This, however, was unnecessary. He said he could not perhaps climb so fast as we did, but he advised us to go on, and leave him. This we did, but halted on a projecting point before we descended to the foot of the fall, and looking back, we were struck at seeing the motions of the sheriff’s dog Camp. The dog was attending anxiously on his master; and when the latter came to a difficult part of the rock, Camp would jump down, look up to his master’s face, then spring up, lick his master’s hand and cheek, jump down again, and look upwards, as if to shew him the way, and encourage him. We were greatly interested with the scene. Mr Scott seemed to depend much on his hands and the great strength of his powerful arms; and he soon fought his way over all obstacles, and joined us at the foot of the Grey Mare’s Tail, the name of the cataract.’
This excursion, like most of the others, Scott described in Marmion (Introd. to Canto II.) He was apt, on a journey among the hills, especially if the district was new to him, to fall at times into fits of silence, revolving in his mind, and perhaps throwing into language, the ideas that were suggested at the moment by the landscape; and hence those who had often been his companions knew the origin of many of the beautiful passages in his future works. Of this Laidlaw used to relate one instance. About a mile down Douglas-burn, a small brook falls into it from the Whitehope hills; and at the junction of the streams, at the foot of a bank celebrated in traditionary story, stood the withered remains of what had been a very large old hawthorn tree, that had often engaged the attention of the young men at Blackhouse. Laidlaw on one occasion pointed out to the sheriff its beautiful site and venerable appearance, and asked him if he did not think it might be centuries old, and once a leading object in the landscape. As the district had been famous for game and wild animals, he said there could be little doubt that the red deer had often lain under the shade of the tree, before they ascended to feed on the open hill-tops in the evening. Scott looked on the tree and the green hills, but said nothing. The enthusiastic guide repeated his admiration, and added, that Whitehope-tree was famous for miles around; but still Scott was silent. The subject was then dropped; ‘but some years afterwards,’ said Laidlaw, ‘when the sheriff read to me his manuscript of Marmion, I found that Whitehope-tree was not forgotten, and that he had felt all the associations it was calculated to excite.’ The description of the thorn is eminently suggestive and beautiful:
‘The scenes are desert now and bare,
Where flourished once a Forest fair,
When these waste glens with copse were lined,
And peopled with the hart and hind.
Yon Thorn, perchance, whose prickly spears
Have fenced him for three hundred years,
While fell around his green compeers—
Yon lonely Thorn, would he could tell