There is only one small lake or loch near Colding ham, of no moment. The Tweed, though it skirts Berwickshire in a winding course of forty miles, can scarcely be considered as belonging to the county, as no portion of its territory crosses that fine stream, and its rise is at a great distance in the west of Tweed dale or Peebles-shire. Whitadder and Blackadder are the principal rivers of the county, though the former rises in East Lothian ; and both united run into Tweed near Berwick. Leeder or Leader, en tirely belonging to and giving name to Lauderdale, runs from north to south, and falls into the Tweed at the south-west corner of the county. Eden, which rises at the west end of the Merse, runs into Tweed in that part of Roxburghshire which lies on the north side of this river, usurping, as it were, a va luable portion from the Merse, which probably, in ancient times, formed a part of the constabulary of Roxburgh Castle or Marchmount ; a separate juris diction independent of the adjoining sheriffdoms. The Eye, a small water, or large burn, is the only stream of any consequence in the county which runs direct. ly into the sea.
This is by no means a mineral district. The ge neral run of the rocks and lower hills is composed of most irregularly stratified schistic stone, or hardened clay, with yolks of whin-stone, and quartz veins, mostly very thin and irregularly branching, but much mixed with a kind of steatitic half lapidified substance, called leek by the quarriers. In the higher muirs, there is a good deal of amorphous and splintery trap, or bastard whin-stone. In several places there are rocks of breccia, or coarse pudding-stone, many of which are in small .fragments ; but. a remarkable in stance occurs in the rocky cape or promontory co vering Eyemouth bay on the north-east, which is ) composed of large nodules of whin and schist, of great varieties of size, form, and colour, imbedded in lapi dified clay, somewhat like steatite, of various colours, often greenish, generally very hard and tough, but soapy to the feel. This stone is very durable, even when exposed to the stormy waves of the German Ocean, as is manifest both by the mother rock, and by Eyemouth outer pier, which has stood the raging of the sea uninjured for above thirty years. In many places there is abundance of stratified silicious sand stone, usually called free-stone, much of which is coarse grained, yet useful in building ; though in some places it is found of very fine grain, and beauti ful in colour and texture, standing the weather ad mirably. No coal has yet been found worth working in the county ; and, indeed, the only seam yet disco vered is at Lamberton, or which there .are various ru mours, .none of which are worthy of being mentioned for want of full and' authentic information. At Ord well, on the Whitadder, an attempt was made, many years ago, to dig for copper ore, and the gallery or mine is yet open and accessible for a considerable way.
The writer of this account could never procure any report on this subject worth listening to, and he only knows that it was abandoned long ago. Agricultu ral reports have now been procured of all or most of the counties and districts of our country ; and it were perhaps worth national encouragement, to employ scientific mineralogists and geognosts to examine de liberately and to report upon the probability of our subterranean riches.
Berwickshire is noted as an agricultural district of peculiar excellence in its general system of ma nagement, which consists in judiciously blending to g-ether the cultivation of grain and grass alternately, or what is usually called the convertible agriculture. In this plan, a portion of every arable farm, usually about half, is in pasture, appropriated for the breed ing and feeding of cattle and sheep ; while the re mainder is under arration, for the production of tur nips, rota baga, and hay, as winter provender for the stock, and grain of all the usual kinds for sale ; and these are regularly and progressively interchanged. One remarkable excellence of this system, where it is not hampered by injudicious covenants in leases, is that in any turn of markets in favour of stock or grain, or the contrary, the farmers can suddenly, take the advantage of the change by extending the branch which promises profit, and curtailing the other. But the limits of an article like the present does not ad mit of extending our remarks on this subject, which will be found detailed in the agricultural report of the county.
All farms in this county are held under regular leases, mostly for nineteen years endurance, some times more, but seldom in those recently granted, and a few shorter. By these the farmers stipulate to pay a certain money rent yearly, hardly ever a grain rent, and there are no personal services or bondages. The rental amounts paid by farmers must, of course, vary according to the value of the lands. But the farms taken within the last six years, in good situations as to manure and markets, and of tolerably good soil on the average, have been let at from one pound to thirty shillings, two guineas, and even up to three guineas and four pounds eleven and sixpence the English acre ; which, for the Scots, arc respectively R1 : 5 : 6, £1, 18s. : 13 : 4•, R-1, and Rb : 16 :4. But there is every reason to suspect that at least the extreme rents in the foregoing enumeration are beyond the golden mean ; especially considering that Berwick shire contains no carse soil, and even, generally speak ing, its soil is far from being of a deep and substantial nature, except around towns and villages, having only been manured since the cessation of the border wars ; before which most of it lay in waste pasture, or under the miserable deteriorating system of lee and run rig.