In early September 1767, Henry Scott, the twenty-year-old 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, arrived in Scotland to celebrate his coming of age and the full inheritance of his estates. The Duke, together with his new wife, Lady Elizabeth Montagu, and his younger sister, Lady Frances Scott, crossed the border at Scotch Dyke before travelling on to nearby Langholm Castle in Eskdale. Here they were joined by John Craigie of Kilgraston, the advocate who had been responsible for the administration of his Scottish estates during much of his minority and whose role now was to guide the Duke on his journey north through his estates. It was the Duke's first visit to Scotland, and although he had been kept relatively well informed about the management of his estates, it was only now, as the party progressed through them, that the sheer scale of his Scottish inheritance must have become fully apparent. Following the new turnpike road that had been largely funded at his expense, the Duke's journey took him through the heart of his vast Border holdings, known collectively as the ‘South Country estates’. From the moment they had crossed the border into Scotland until they reached the estate of Yair in northern Selkirkshire, a distance of over forty miles, the party would travel almost entirely through lands belonging to the Duke. From the low-lying arable estates of Canonbie and lower Eskdale they passed through the centre of the Southern Uplands, the road climbing between the high green hills of Ewesdale to the watershed at Mosspaul before descending into Teviotdale. En route, according to one source, the Duke's sheep-farming tenants had herded their flocks down to line the roadside, so that the Duke and Duchess ‘might see wherein the Riches of the Land consisted’. After leaving Hawick, where they were entertained by local dignitaries, they travelled on along the eastern edge of the sprawling Ettrick Forest estate before finally leaving the last of the South Country estates. Eventually, several days after crossing the border, the party reached the Duke's Midlothian estates and the family's principal seat of Dalkeith House, four miles south of Edinburgh.