Wild Adventures Round the Pole: The Cruise of the "Snowbird" Crew in the "Arrandoon"

The Twin Rivers—A Busy Scene—Old Friends with New Faces—The Building of the Great Ship—People’s Opinions—Ralph’s Highland Home. Wilder scenery there is in abundance in Scotland, but hardly will you find any more picturesquely beautiful than that in which the two great rivers, the Clyde and the Tweed, first begin their journey seawards. It is a classic land, there is poetry in every breath you breathe, the very air seems redolent of romance. Here Coleridge, Scott, and Burns roved. Wilson loved it well, and on yonder hills Hogg, the Bard of Ettrick—he who “taught the wandering winds to sing”—fed his flocks. It is a land, too, not only of poetic memories, but one dear to all who can appreciate daring deeds done in a good cause, and who love the name of hero. If the reader saw the rivers we have just named, as they roll their waters majestically into the ocean, the one at Greenock, the other near the quaint old town of Berwick, he would hardly believe that at the commencement of their course they are so small and narrow that ordinary-sized men can step across them, that bare-legged little boys wade through them, and thrust their arms under their green banks, bringing therefrom many a lusty trout. But so it is. Both rise in the same district, within not very many miles of each other, and for a considerable distance they follow the same direction and flow north