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Wild Adventures round the Pole
Wild Adventures round the Pole / Or, The Cruise of the «Snowbird» Crew in the «Arrandoon»
Chapter One.
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.
But soon the Tweed gets very faint-hearted indeed.
“The country is getting wilder and wilder,” she says to her companion, “we’ll never be able to do it. I’m going south and east. It is easier.”
“And I,” says the bold Clyde, “am going northwards and west; it is more difficult, and therein lies the enjoyment. I will conquer every obstacle, I’ll defy everything that comes against me, and thus I’ll be a mightier river than you. I’ll water great cities, and on my broad breast I will bear proud navies to the ocean, to do battle against wind and wave. ‘Faint heart never won fair lady.’ Farewell, friend Tweed, farewell.”
And so they part.
This conversation between the two rivers is held fourteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, and five score miles and over have to be traversed before the Clyde can reach it. Yet, nothing daunted, merrily on she rolls, gaining many an accession of strength on the way from streams and burns.
“If you are going seaward,” say these burns, “so are we, so we’ll take the liberty of joining you.”
“And right welcome you are,” sings the Clyde; “in union lies strength.”