Leaving Glendearg, it is necessary to follow the progress of the romance towards the Castle of Avenel, alias Smailholm Tower. The distance between the two places is nearly seven miles. There is no regular road, but a track can be discovered, which runs eastward from Hillslop, through the base of the Gattonside, a small chain which runs from E. to W., in the direction of Melrose. The path is a most unenviable one; for, besides the obstacles of ditch and furze, it is intersected by deep morasses, which often render it quite impassable. In threading it, we pass Threepwood and Blainslie Mosses, the favourite resort of the Moss-troopers, who kept the peaceful inhabitants in continual alarm. Their ravages were particularly extensive during the usurpation of Cromwell, who allowed these depredators to scourge Scotland unpunished.
SMAILHOLM TOWER.
We hope to be able to show, from the description of this ancient fortress, that it agrees in the leading features with Avenel Castle; and if the reader will carry back his imagination for two centuries, he will be better able to minute the resemblance. Smailholm tower, distant about seven miles from Melrose to the east, and eight from Kelso to the west, is the most perfect relic of the feudal keep in the south of Scotland. It stands upon a rock of considerable height, in the centre of an amphitheatre of craggy hills, which rise many hundred feet above the level of the fertile plains of the Merse. Between the hills there appear ravines of some depth, which, being covered with straggling clumps of mountain shrubs, afford an agreeable relief to the rocks which are continually starting upon the eye. Nature indeed seems to have destined this isolated spot for a bulwark against the border marauders; but its strength and security was not confined to the encircling eminences. It chiefly lay in a deep and dangerous loch, which completely environed the castle, and extended on every side to the hills. Of this loch only a small portion remains, it having been drained, many years ago, for the convenience of the farmer on whose estate it was thought a nuisance. But the fact is evident, not only from the swampiness of the ground, which only a few years since created a dangerous morass, but from the appearance of the remaining pool, which has hitherto defied the efforts of the numerous drain-beds which surround it in every direction. Some people in the neighbourhood recollect and can mark out the extent of the large sheet of water which gave so romantic an air to this shred of antiquity.
We cannot omit giving the following animated picture of the local beauties, from the pencil of Sir Walter Scott.
“—Then rise those crags, that mountain tower,
Which charmed my fancy’s wakening hour.
* * * *
It was a barren scene and wild,
Where naked cliffs were rudely piled:
But ever and anon between