boats to follow the herring all round the coast. Dunbar fishermen have not the capital that is now required to carry on the fishing, but where, then, do the other fishermen get it? I asked a Cellardyke fisherman the other day, and his explanation was as follows: "Well, sir, there were two places on the East Coast where the boats used to go out on the Sabbath day, one was Dunbar and the other Stonehaven, and the fishing has gone down. in them both."

But be the cause what it may, Dunbar is now little but a seaside resort. Not the fashionable watering-place of the English coast with its trim sea-front and boarding-houses and hotels and shingly beach, but a fresh, homely, bracing place, where he who can stand the strong air and high winds will find health and strength and an enormous appetite.

CHAPTER III

NORTH BERWICK

The

It is a pleasant drive from Dunbar to North Berwick, a distance of some ten miles. road runs though the quiet little village of Belhaven, once the port of Dunbar, for the flatbottomed galliots from the Low Countries took more kindly to the sandy shore than to the rocky coast by the town.

The magnificent stretch of sand extending from Belhaven to the mouth of the Tyne, a distance of several miles, was used as a drilling ground by the Lothians and Berwickshire Yeomanry Cavalry, certainly an ideal place for the purpose. Along the shore run Hedderwick Links and racecourse, a fine stretch of the open sandy soil which grows the real golfing turf.

A few miles from Dunbar, we leave the main Edinburgh road, turn to the right, and,

crossing a bridge over the Tyne, the stream so beloved by Scottish artists, come to the little village of Tyninghame. Here for several miles the road runs through the famous Binning Woods. Even at this day we may note the ravages of the great storm of the 14th of October 1881. Great circular spaces have been swept bare as the whirlwind passed along, which, though now filling up with trees of younger growth, still form noticeable gaps in the groves of great trees.

A little farther on is Whitekirk with its beautiful old church, reminding one rather of St. Monans on the opposite shore, and a mile or two farther on we strike the shore again near Tantallon Castle.

A walk of a hundred yards down a muddy lane and through a farm-steading, takes you out on the patch of green sward, on the seaward margin of which stands the ancient stronghold of the Douglases.

Scott's lines in "Marmion" give a vivid picture of the castle in feudal days—

"Tantallon's dizzy steep

Hung o'er the margin of the deep.

Many a rude tower and rampart there
Repell'd the insult of the air,

Which, when the tempest vex'd the sky,
Half breeze, half spray, came whistling by.
Above the rest, a turret square

Did o'er its Gothic entrance bear,
Of sculpture rude, a stony shield;
The Bloody Heart was in the Field,
And in the chief three mullets stood,
The cognizance of Douglas blood.
The turret held a narrow stair,
Which, mounted, gave you access where
A parapet's embattled row

Did seaward round the castle go.
Sometimes in dizzy steps descending,
Sometimes in narrow circuit bending,
Sometimes in platform broad extending,
Its varying circle did combine
Bulwark, and bartizan, and line,
And bastion, tower, and vantage-coign;
Above the booming ocean leant
The far-projecting battlement;
The billows burst, in ceaseless flow,
Upon the precipice below.

Where'er Tantallon faced the land,

Gate-works and walls were strongly mann'd;

No need upon the sea-girt side;

The steepy rock and frantic tide,

Approach of human steps denied ;

And thus these lines, and ramparts rude,
Were left in deepest solitude.”

Now, alas, the drawbridge is gone, though the ditch it spanned may still be traced, and walls and towers have suffered much by the ravages of time. Still sufficient remains to let us see

how impregnable the place must once have been, and explains how even at so late a date as 1651 it held out for five months against Cromwell's troops. Compared with the utter destruction of Dunbar Castle, the ruins are comparatively complete, and the stout walls flanked by towers give a good idea of what the appearance of the former castle must have been, for Tantallon is Dunbar Castle in miniature.

Skirting Canty Bay the road now runs through open fields to North Berwick, the favourite holiday resort of Edinburgh people.

It is a curious combination of a quaint oldfashioned town and a modern watering-place. The old town nestles round the tiny harbour, which still contains a number of small boats, while away to the west stretches a new town of handsome villas. Smart Edinburgh shops have branches in the High Street, yet a few yards away you step into Quality Street, a quiet corner full of the atmosphere of the eighteenth century and containing some fine old specimens of Scottish architecture.

Out by the harbour runs a reef of the black