At the end of July 1770, two months after the Entail Act had finally been passed, the Duke embarked on a ten-day tour of his South Country estates. On leaving Dalkeith he travelled south, first to Yair in northern Selkirkshire, then on to Bowhill near Selkirk, before travelling on through Teviotdale and Ewesdale, finally arriving at his summer residence of Langholm Castle in Eskdale. As soon became evident, the main purpose of the tour was to inspect his estates with a view to instigating the improvements enabled by the new legislation. In Langholm, after an inspection of the existing tradesmen's and labourers’ cottages on the estate there, the Duke gave orders for ninety-nine-year building leases to be granted, ‘pursuant to the powers in the late Act of Parliament’, for a street of uniform, stone-walled and slate-roofed houses on his land across the river from the existing town of Langholm, instigating what would become his planned village of New Langholm. A few days later, on 9 August, the Duke made the short journey south to Canonbie, the largest of his lowland arable estates. Accompanied by John Church and his chamberlain William Ogilvie, the Duke inspected the estate, ordering a new arrangement to be made of a number of farms on the east side of the river Esk. After personally pointing out the boundaries of the proposed new farms, the Duke gave instructions that they were to be subdivided in such a manner ‘as may better serve the purpose of cultivation’, and that the work was to be carried out ‘with all convenient speed’. Two days later he had travelled the forty miles northeast to Eckford, his arable estate in eastern Roxburghshire, where, after viewing the estate, he met with a neighbouring landowner to arrange an exchange of land, or ‘excambion’ – another power granted by the recent Act. As the proposed exchange would affect the boundaries of a number of other farms on the estate, the Duke ordered that a new arrangement should be made to render them ‘more comodious & fitt for any future plan of inclosing’.