ports
of the country, I often spend an hour or two in the evening in
shooting herons, which are numerous on this part of the river. To
do this I have no farther to go than the bottom of our garden,
which literally hangs over the river. When you fire at a bird,
she always crosses the river, and when again shot at with ball,
usually returns to your side, and will cross in this way several
times before she takes wing. This furnishes fine sport; nor are
they easily shot, as you never can get very near them. The
intervals between their appearing are spent very agreeably in
eating gooseberries.

Yesterday was St. James's Fair, a day of great business. There
was a great show of black cattle--I mean of ministers; the
narrowness of their stipends here obliges many of them to enlarge
their incomes by taking farms and grazing cattle. This, in my
opinion, diminishes their respectability, nor can the farmer be
supposed to entertain any great reverence for the ghostly advice
of a _pastor_ (they literally deserve the epithet) who perhaps
the day before overreached him in a bargain. I would not have you
to suppose there are no exceptions to this character, but it
would serve most of them. I had been fishing with my uncle,
Captain Scott, on the Teviot, and returned through the ground
where the Fair is kept. The servant was waiting there with our
horses, as we were to ride the water. Lucky it was that it was
so; for just about that time the magistrates of Jedburgh, who
preside there, began their solemn procession through the Fair.
For the greater dignity upon this occasion they had a pair of
boots among three men--_i. e._, as they ride three in a rank, the
_outer_ legs of those personages who formed the outside, as it
may be called, of the procession, were {p.151} each clothed in
a boot. This and several other incongruous appearances were
thrown in the teeth of those cavaliers by the Kelso populace,
and, by the assistance of whiskey, parties were soon inflamed to
a very tight battle, one of that kind which, for distinction
sake, is called royal. It was not without great difficulty that
we extricated ourselves from the confusion; and had we been on
foot, we might have been trampled down by these fierce
Jedburghians, who charged like so many troopers. We we