DUMFRIES, one of the three Scottish border counties, lies in an elliptical form on the north side of the Solway Firth, its other boundaries being Lanark, Peebles, and Selkirk on the N., Roxburgh on the E., Ayr and Kirkcudbright on the W., and Cumberland on the S. Its greatest length is fully 50 miles, its breadth 32, its circumference 190, and the area is 1103 square miles or 702,953 acres. The coast-line on the Solway measures 21 miles. Towards this arm of the sea the county slopes down from a high mountain range, by which it is cinctured on the north, the intermediate pace being extremely irregular, lofty hills alternating with wide stretches of table land or rich fertile holms, and in other instances the surface looking like a vast undulating mass that by some natural process had suddenly become fixed and rigid. Among the leading features of the county are the three dales by which it is cleft from north to south, and through which run the rivers that give name to them, the Nith, Annan, and Esk. Overlooking these rise numerous elevations, the highest being Whitecoomb in the east, 2695 feet; Hartfell in the north, 2651 feet; Queensberry, also in the north, 2285 feet, which gives to the duke of Buccleuch his secondary title, and the title of marquis to a branch of the house of Douglas; and Ettrick Pen, 2269 feet, the latter standing sentinel over an extensive district.
The Nith is the chief river of the county Starting from its mountain cradle near Dalmellington, in Ayrshire, it takes a south-westerly sweep, watering the old burgh of Sanquhar, at the head of Nithsdale, and further down the modern village of Thornhill, near which stands the ducal castle of Drumlanrig. As the river proceeds it passes on the one hand Dalswinton, where Patrick Miller made his first fruitful experiments in steam navigation, and on the other the acres of Ellisland, which Robert Burns turned over with his plough. At Auldgirth Bridge, near Blackwood, the dale narrows considerably; then it expands till around and below the burgh of Dumfries it appears as a spacious plain, with gentle acclivities or bolder elevations rising on every side. The Nith is swelled by numerous streams at various stages, its latest and largest acquisition being the Cluden, the confluence taking place about a mile above Dumfries, and the absorbing river reaching the Solway about eight miles below that burgh, its whole course measuring about 50 miles
An upland spot, where the counties of Lanark, Peebles, and Dumfries converge, gives birth to three streams, according to the popular saying,
“Annan, Tweed, and Clyde All arise from one hillside.”
The first-named river, after a rapid canter from its hign-land source, five miles above Moffat, receives several tributaries a little south of that town, then proceeds at a leisurely pace down the dale, which, narrowed at first by rocks or ridges, expands into a fertile basin termed “the Howe of Annandale,” studded with hamlets and spangled by the nine lochs of Lochmaben,—that venerable royal burgh, which claims to have been the birth-place of King Robert Bruce, and the prosperous town of Lockerbie occupying conspicuous places on the western and eastern banks; other rivulets, including the Dryfe (flowing past the scene of a fierce clan battle fought between the Maxwells and Johnstones in 1675), giving increased volume to the stream below Bruce’s burgh, the valley narrowing again as the water grows wider and deeper. When little more than a mile from the sea it passes Annan, the second town in the county, its entire length being nearly 40 miles.
During about a mile of its course the Esk divides Dumfriesshire from Cumberland; starting from the Selkirk shire frontier it flows southward past the baronial town of Langholm, and, after being a Scottish stream to the extent of 30 miles, it enters English ground, waters Longtown, describes a westward curve, and then falls like its two sister streams into the Solway, its entire course extending to about 40 miles.
Besides the lakes in Annandale already referred to, Loch Skene, lying under the shadow of Whitecoomb hill, 1300 feet above sea-level, is the only one of consequence; its water finds an outlet by leaping over a rocky height of 300 feet, forming a cascade termed the Gray Mare’s Tail. Another small but exceedingly picturesque waterfall in Morton parish is called Crichope Linn.
The chief mineral waters of the county are those of the well at Moffat, and another about five miles distant, called Hartfell Spa, situated in a cleft of the hill from which it takes its name. The former are reckoned beneficial for chronic gout, rheumatism, and liver complaints; and the latter acts as a mild astringent and powerful tonic. Owing to the great repute of these waters, and the romantic scenery of the surrounding district, Moffat during summer and early autumn becomes a favourite and fashionable place of resort. A small chalybeate at Brow, on the Solway, possesses considerable virtue, and is rendered interesting from the circumstance that it was partaken of by Burns during his last illness, though without avail.
Generally speaking the climate is mild and salubrious, with a mean temperature of 45° Fahr., the average rainfall supplying sometimes more than enough of moisture. The soils are chiefly gravel or sandy loam and clay, except where river and estuary have formed rich alluvial tracts. At no very distant date it was roughly computed that there were 86 square miles of arable land lying along the sea coast, 322 miles chiefly upland, and 598 miles mountainous yielding nothing but heather and game; but by the application of bone manure, draining, planting, and green crop husbandry, all this is changed, no fewer than 213,784 acres being under the plough—even the huge expanse of Lochar moss, lying in the parishes of Tinwald, Dumfries, and Torthorwald, becoming by degrees less of a reproach to the agricultural enterprise of its proprietors, though much of the surface of the county still wears a pastoral aspect drawn from one of its chief rural industries, sheep-breeding. In 1876 there were 49,975 acres under corn crops, of which 48,292 were oats and 546 wheat; 25,669 were under green crops, of which 20,747 were turnips; and 63,762 were in grass under rotation. These figures differ little from those for 1873, except that 1231 acres were then in wheat. With abundance of coal at the two extremities—Sanquhar and Canonbie; with limestone at Kilhead, Closebum, and Barjarg; with lead mines at Wanlockhead, the produce of which when undergoing refinement yields a large percentage of silver; with gold dust and even nuggets of that metal in the same district, but now no longer searched for systematically, as they were with considerable success in the 16th and 17th centuries; with sandstone quarries in various quarters; with woollen mills at Langholm; with numerous manufactures centring in the county town; with some little sea-borne traffic; and with good salmon fisheries in the Nith, along the Carlaverock shore, and at Annan Water-Foot on the Solway,—the county itself is still essentially an agricultural one, and as such it takes high rank.
Early in the 18th century the district breeders of Galloway cattle began to send stock to the south; and, before the current century was far advanced, some 15,000 head of heavy cattle were annually driven from Dumfriesshire and Galloway to the English markets. Forty years ago the number had increased to 20,000, their value on an average being at least £200,000. For some years past Ayrshire dairy cattle and shorthorns have superseded the Galloways on most farms of the county, and its trade in live stock generally has considerably decreased. Few store cattle are exported, they being mostly grazed a year or two and fed off; and similar treatment is given to numerous short-horn yearlings and two-year-olds that are imported from Ireland. In 1876 the entire cattle in the county numbered 53,778 head, the sheep 493,020, the horses 7390, the pigs 14,413, —these returns varying little from those of 1873, except as regards sheep, which amounted that year to 513,849. The sheep trade of Dumfriesshire, which is of comparatively recent origin, is now of great extent. Cheviots predominate, the frugal, black-faced breed still occupying the higher sheep walks, while half-bred lambs, the produce of Cheviot ewes crossed by Leicester or other long-wooled rams, are fattened on the richer pasture yielded by low-lying farms, supplemented by turnips in winter, and are thus made ready for the butcher when fifteen months old. For nearly a hundred years pigfeeding has occupied· a place in the rural economy of the county. A sum of .£50,000 represented its annual trade in pork about sixty years ago. Influenced by large imports of bacon from America, the curing of carcases has of late decreased. In 1876 the number sold in the public markets of the county was under 8000, the value of which, allowing for those disposed off privately, would not exceed £45,000; a few years back the annual value ran from £70,000 to £75,000. As regards quality and flavour, the Dumfriesshire hams still maintain the high character they have long held in the English markets.
Three leading highways, one in each valley, with numerous branch roads, intersect the county. It possesses also ample railway communication,—the Glasgow and SouthWestern line, completed in 1850, extending through Nithsdale and Lower Annandale, and, soon after passing Gretna Green (famous in days of yore for its matrimonial celebrations), crossing the little border river Sark; and the Caledonian line, completed in 1849, traversing Moffatdale and Upper Annandale, and also a portion of England as far as Carlisle.
In a Parliamentary Blue Book (1874) the acreage of the county is given at 676,971, and its yearly value (1872) at £595,511, 17s., the owners numbering 4177, of whom 886 possessed more than one acre each, the value per acre being 17s. 7d. as compared with 2 0s. for all Scotland. From the valuation roll for 1876 we learn that the chief proprietor, the duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, owns 253,514 acres, yielding an annual revenue of £97,840. The names of other leading proprietors, with their extent of land and incomes from it, are—Mr J. J. Hope Johnstone of Annandale, 64,079 acres, with a rental of £28,684; earl of Mansfield, 14,342 acres, £15,938; marquis of Queensberry, 13,243, £13,982; Mrs Villiers and Viscountess Cole of Closeburn, 13,560, £11,658; Sir John Heron Maxwell of Springkell, 13,391, £9023; Mr R. Jardine of Castlemilk, 17,064, £9339; Sir F. J. W. Johnstone of Westerhall, 7714, £7932; and Lord Herries, 5814, £6537. Population of county in 1861, 75,878; in 1871, 74,784.
Dumfriesshire during the Roman occupation formed part of the province of Valentia, which lay between the walls of Hadrian and Antonine, the British tribes occupying it being termed the Selgovae. In course of time they were dispossessed by other Celts, the Scoto-Irish; but the aboriginal Britons shared with the latter, and with the numerous Saxons and the few Normans of a later day, in being the progenitors of the existing inhabitants; and or them lasting memorials remain in the names of rivers, mountains, and headlands, most of which are British, “the nomenclature of the earliest colonists of the county thus remaining unchanged by the conflicts of race or the flight of ages." Down to the death οΐ Dâvid I., Nithsdale and some other portions of the district were still to a large extent Celtic in their people and institutions; after that king’s reign we begin to read of its historical families, some of whom are still its leading landowners—of its Maxwells, Douglases, Kirkpatricks, Johnstones, Bruces, Baliols, Cornyns, Scotts, Carlyles, Jardines, Murrays, and Crichtons.
Of all the primitive inhabitants numerous memorials still exist in the form of druidical remains, British motes and camps, Roman roads and camps, Anglo-Saxon relics, the chief of the latter being the Runic monument at Ruthwell, which tells the story of the Cross in characters as old as the days of the Heptarchy. As the county is also replete with “chiefless castles breathing stern farewells,” and other time-worn tokens of bye-gone ages, it presents a rich field for archaeological research.
Dumfries, beautifully situated on the left bank of the Nith, about eight miles from the Solway Firth, is the capital of the county just described.
The irregular yet decided progress of the town can be traced through the Middle Ages, and more recently till our own day, when it wears an attractive and flourishing aspect. A serious check was given to its prosperity by a visitation of cholera, which cut off more than 500 of its inhabitants in 1832. Since a copious supply of good water was obtained from a neighbouring loch, and other sanitary improvements were introduced, the salubrity of the burgh has been fairly established, and its size and trade—promoted also by its railway intercourse and the establishment of the tweed manufacture—have greatly increased. Few Scotch provincial towns have gone forward with such a gigantic stride during the last thirty years, and its steps in advance have been especially remarkable during the latter half of that period, as shown chiefly by the bustle of its business streets, the formation of new thoroughfares, and the numerous suburban villas which now environ the old burgh proper.
From time immemorial the town has possessed a great weekly cattle market, which, though reduced since 1848 by the establishment of competing markets, and the substitution of sheep for cattle on many surrounding farms, is still second to none on the north side of the border. The average number of cattle sold on the Sands during five years ending 1872 was nearly 14,000 yearly; in 1876 the number was 18,413, besides 6844 sold at the auction marts. Vast herds are also sent direct south from the railway station. A still larger trade is now done in sheep, the average number offered for sale during five years ending 1872 being 37,000, while 29,980 were sold at market in 1876, and 42,958 by auction. There is also a weekly market for pork, beginning in November and ending about the end of March.
Among the special industries of Dumfries, clog-making and basket-making have long occupied an important place; its traffic in timber has grown to be immense; a hundred acres of nursery ground help to beautify the town, and supply material for an extensive trade in seeds, flowers, and other plants; the conversion of skins into hides and leather gives labour to about 150 hands; while nearly the same number are engaged at iron works. More extensive than any of these is the hosiery manufacture, which, dating a century back, now gives employment to about 480 hands (including warehousemen), the goods produced ranking as the best in Scotland, and next to those of Hawick in extent. Prior to 1847, however, the prosperity of Dumfries depended much on its position as the capital of a rich rural district, which it still is; but soon after that date it began to bulk largely as a manufacturing town in connection with the tweed trade; and to its development the growth of the burgh in size and opulence is principally due. The principal firm, that of Walter Scott and Sons, usually employs about 1400 workers, with 400 looms and 30,000 spindles. Nearly all the business traffic to and from Dumfries is now carried on by rail, the vessels belonging to the port numbering only two or three, and its revenue— burdened by heavy interest on a sum borrowed to erect a large sea-dyke, which has been of little benefit—is insufficient to cover the expenditure.
The origin of two places of worship in connection with the Established Church (St Mary’s and Greyfriars’) is noticed below; a third, St Michael’s, is a stately fabric dating from 1746. Before the lower interior was reseated in 1869, it contained a pew which Burns and his family occupied. The poet’s remains rest under a magnificent mausoleum in the surrounding churchyard; and besides this paramount distinction the cemetery is richer with monumental erections than that of any other provincial town in the United Kingdom. Among the other ecclesiastical buildings are three Free churches, three belonging to the United Presbyterians, two to the Congregationalists, one each to the Wesleyan, the Scottish Episcopal, the Catholic Apostolic, and the Roman Catholic, while two other denominations—the Baptists and Evangelical Union— are also represented, Dumfries has three newspapers, two of them published twice a week and one weekly. It has long been able to boast of a well-equipped grammarschool—the Academy. The town possesses its full share of benevolent institutions. Its oldest one, Moorhead’s Hospital, erected in 1753, gives accommodation to decayed householders. A hospital for the reception of persons suffering from disease or accident has been inexistence since 1778, under the name of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Royal Infirmary, but the building now used as such, an imposing edifice in the Northern Italian style, was only opened a few years back; 398 patients were treated in 1876, at a total outlay of £2137. Crowning an eminence situated a little southward of the town stands a noble building resembling a Greek cross; this is the Crichton Royal Institution for lunatics, due to the munificence of Dr James Crichton of Friars’ Carse, whose bequest of £100,000 was applied in erecting and partly endowing the asylum. Since it was opened, nearly forty years ago, it has been considerably enlarged, and also supplemented (in 1848) by the Southern Counties’ Asylum for pauper inmates chiefly; usually the patients number about 500, nearly a third, as middle and upper class patients, being housed in the older portion of the establishment. The old infirmary building is now used as a commercial academy connected with the Marist Brotherhood, and . dedicated to St Joseph. In it about 70 youths receive education; belonging to the establishment there is a novitiate adjoining the Roman Catholic chapel, where 14 members of the order are under training for missionary service at home or abroad. Several of the banking establishments possess a fine appearance, but the county buildings in Buccleuch Street (Scotch baronial in design), Greyfriars’ Church fronting the head of High Street (Pointed Gothic), and the new infirmary are the most imposing edifices within the burgh. It has a theatre royal, opened in 1792, which was almost entirely reconstructed at a cost of £3000 in 1876, and its interior is now, size considered, as handsome as that of any similar place of entertainment throughout the kingdom. There is no object in the town that can vie with Devorgilla’s Bridge as regards archaeological interest. Built of stone about 1280, it had no equal at that period in Scotland, though the popular story which assigns to it thirteen arches is belied by indisputable documents which show that they never numbered more than nine. A second stone bridge was built in 1793-5, at an expense of about £5000; and a small iron foot bridge, which cost nearly £2000, was opened on the closing day of 1875. The associations of Dumfries with Burns, however, and the memorials it possesses of the national bard, draw to it more travellers annually than all its other attractions—scenic, antiquarian, or social.
The town council consists of 25 members, including a provost, 3 bailies, a dean of guild, and a treasurer. Four other royal burghs combine to form a parliamentary constituency with Dumfries, namely, Annan, Kirkcudbright, Sanquhar, and Lochmaben—these, “The Five Carlins” of Burns’s ballads, being represented by one member. In 1861 the population within the royalty was 12,347; in 1871 it had increased to 13,704. As a parliamentary burgh Dumfries includes Maxwelltown on the opposito bank of the Nith, its population as such amounting in 1871 to 18,826.
History.— The precise circumstances of the origin of Dumfries are but imperfectly known; but the prevailing opinion is that a fortlet built by the Selgovae Britons formed the nucleus of the town, an hypothesis that is supported by its name, which, according to Chalmers, is resolvable into two Gaelic terms signifying a castle among the brushwoxl. The oldest existing charter is one granted by Robert II., dated 1395. Made a royal burgh by William the Lion, Dumfries thereby acquired important privileges; and another stimulus to its prosperity was supplied when Devorgilla, daughter of Alan, lord of Galloway, connected that province with the town by building a stone bridge over the Nith. It was the son of that munificent lady, John Balio!, whom Edward I. of England selected as heir to the Scottish throne from the numerous competitors for it who placed their claims at his disposal. During the troubles that ensued, Nithsdale and Galloway supported Baliol, and or. his withdrawal from public life they for the most part favoured the pretensions of his nephew John, the Red Comyιι, as opposed to those of Robert Brace, who drew considerable support from his patrimonial estates of Annandale.
Dumfries figured much in the wars of the period. Whilst the great border castle of Carlaverock was being besieged by an army under the command of King Edward in 1300, the town was visited by him personally, and, as we learn from the Wcmlrobe Accounts, he lodged with a body of Franciscan friars in a house built for them by Dcvorgilla, and partly maintained by dues levied at tho bridgo which owed its existence to her liberality. Six years afterwards, when Edward had smitten down all opposition to his ambitious designs, the monastery which he had visited became the scene of a deed which led to the overthrow of them all. On the 10th of Febnιary 1306 Bruce and Comyn were brought together in the streets of the ancient burgh. As they entered the monastery in company, Brace charged his rival with treachery; the latter denied the accusation, and the next moment was stabbed to the heart, Kirkpatrick rushing in to “mak siccar” or complete the deed of slaughter which the lord of Annandale had begun. The blow by which the Red Comyn perished in the house erected by his pious grandmother broke all amicable intercourse between the homicidal baron and the English king; and thenceforward Bruce became thoroughly committed to the national cause, of which he had been previously but a questionable friend. A modern ecclesiastical edifice, St Mary’s Church, occupies a site mournfully associated with the war of independence,—Sir Christopher Seton, husband of Brace’s sister Christiana, having been there executed by order of Edward I. After peace was restored, the sorrowing widow built upon the spot a little chapel, which her royal brother endowed with a hundred shillings sterling per annum in order that masses for the soul of the deceased should be said in it “for ever.” Another church, Greyfriars’, stands on the site of the old castle of Dumfries, which exchanged owners half a dozen times at least during the same troublous period,—its sufferings by siege or storm indicating but too truly the sad experiences of the town itself; and for nearly 250 years afterwards, the proximity of the burgh to the western border exposed it to wasting raids from the English side, carried on sometimes by freebooting parties, and not seldom also by more formidable hosts with higher objects in view than the burning of the place or the plunder of its inhabitants,— these hostile visits, with their retaliatory forays southward, terminating at last in 1551. The long close connection of Dumfries with the heroic yet turbulent Douglases proved on the whole more hurtful to it than advantageous. Bound up for several generations quite as intimately with the Maxwells of Carlaverock and Tcr-regles, the town experienced alternate “weal and woe” from the protracted feuds of that family with the Annandale Johnstones.
When the Union with England was under debate, the provost of Dumfries, as its representative in the Scottish Parliament, voted against the measure; and the Articles of Union were publicly bħrned (Nov. 20, 1706) by a party of Camcronians at the market cross, with the enthusiastic approval of the populace. About nine years afterwards the inhabitants were threatened with a hostile visit from Viscount Kenmure, but they manifested such a bold front that the Jacobite chief acted on Falsta(Γs maxim, “Discretion is the better part of valour.” Less vigilant during the next rebellion, they allowed the town to be peacefully occupied by the young Pretender, who, converting No. 6 of the tenement now used as the Commercial Hotel into a little palace, held high state there for three days towards the close of December 1745. In order at once to recruit his own exchequer and punish the burgh for its loyalty to the house of Hanover, the prince demanded a tribute of £2000 in money; also 1000 pairs of shoes for his kilted followers, whose foot-gear had nearly vanished during their forlorn journey from the south; and, as if he had been de facto king, he levied the excise and appropriated all the moneys possessed by the local Government officials. Influenced by a false alarm, “Bonnie Charlie” made a hurried departure, having first received £1100 of a levy, and carrying with him hostages for the rest. Some years afterwards the burgh was reimbursed by the state for the money contribution, the whole of which had been paid, and for the shoes actually delivered, 225 pairs, the compensation amounting to £2848.
In 1264 Alexander III. planned an expedition to the Isle of Man at Dumfries. The town was visited at subsequent periods by James IV., James V., by the beautiful daughter of the latter monarch, Queen Mary, and by Mary’s son, the “British Solomon.” On the arrival of James VI., 3d August 1617, he was sumptuously entertained by the magistrates in a house that was known as “The Painted Hall;” afterwards he presented the incorporated trades, seven in number, with a tiny “war-engine,” the celebrated Silver Gun, the competition for which encouraged the practice of musketry among the craftsmen, and constituted a great septennial festival, the characteristics of which are finely mirrored in a well-known poem by John Mayne, though the wapinschaw itself has not been held since 1831. (W. M ’ D.)
