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It was evening before the tide began to fall and uncover the stake-nets, which were eagerly and earnestly watched by those who had remained in the camp.
It will not appear surprising to those who have made music their study, that, after listening to a few notes, I became at once assured that the musician was no other than the itinerant, formerly mentioned as present at the destruction of Joshua Geddes's stake-nets, the superior delicacy and force of whose execution would enable me to swear to his bow amongst a whole orchestra.
You must know indeed I think you must have heard, that the fishermen at Brokenburn, and higher up the Solway, have made a raid upon Quaker Geddes's stake-nets, and levelled all with the sands.
As it happened, my attention was caught by hearing two gentlemen close to me discuss a beautiful sketch by Copley Fielding, if I recollect rightly, which hung on the wall a wild waste of tidal sands, with here and there a line of stake-nets fluttering in the wind a grey shroud of rain sweeping up from the westward, through which low red cliffs glowed dimly in the rays of the setting sun a train of horses and cattle splashing slowly through shallow desolate pools and creeks, their wet, red, and black hides glittering in one long line of level light.
Indeed, it was only last night that one at the river's mouth came and warned me and my wife of some new stake-nets which had got into the stream, I cannot tell how, since last winter, and showed us the way round them, in the most charmingly obliging way." "So there are babies in the sea?" cried Tom, and clapped his little hands. "Then I shall have some one to play with there? How delightful!"
The band of fur-traders now set earnestly about the erection of their winter dwelling. The season was so far advanced that the men could no longer be spared from the work to hunt or fish in the mountains, so that they lived chiefly on the produce of the stake-nets in front of the camp, and a small allowance of the provisions with which they had started from Moose Fort.
One of them had seen the spot represented, at the mouth of the Dee, and began telling wild stories of salmon-fishing, and wildfowl shooting and then a tale of a girl, who, in bringing her father's cattle home across the sands, had been caught by a sudden flow of the tide, and found next day a corpse hanging among the stake-nets far below.
'Be assured I will take none at the hand of any man, whether his hat be cocked or broad-brimmed, answered the fisherman. 'I tell you in fair terms, Joshua Geddes, that you and your partners are using unlawful craft to destroy the fish in the Solway by stake-nets and wears; and that we, who fish fairly, and like men, as our fathers did, have daily and yearly less sport and less profit.
Further, if much attention was paid to archery, and if drastic measures were adopted to crush the partisans of the Omi Court who still occasionally raised the standard of revolt, the sovereign devoted not less care to the discharge of the administrative functions, and his legislation extended even to the realm of fishery, where stake-nets and other methods of an injurious nature were strictly interdicted.
'Aye, aye the sheriff-depute did commit some poor creatures, I believe wretched ignorant fishermen bodies, that had been quarrelling with Quaker Geddes and his stake-nets, whilk, under favour of your gown be it spoken, Mr. Fairford, are not over and above lawful, and the town clerk thinks that they may be lawfully removed VIA FACTI but that is by the by.
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