WHITBY. 139 



many layers. In the interior country there are calcareous beds 

 (true Lias limestone) below the shale, but they scarcely appear 

 in the strata of the coast. 



Owing to the great dislocation in the Peak, which brings up 

 the Lower Lias, on the south side of Robin Hood's Bay, the low 

 cliffs and extensive low-water scars of this Bay are formed of the 

 Lower Lias, covered pretty thickly, especially at Bay Town 

 the romantically placed little capital of the bay with northern 

 drift. A little north of Bay Town the cliff is higher, the strata 

 dip northwards, and the Lower Lias sinks below the sea-level, 

 and is succeeded by the Marlstone and Ironstone series, and 

 finally the Upper Lias guards the base of the cliff as far as the 

 east side of Whitby Harbour. Between Robin Hood's Bay and 

 Whitby, the highest point of cliff, called High Whitby, is 285 

 feet above the sea, and here fossil Equiseta may be seen erect 

 in the gritstone rocks. Other plants of great beauty occur in 

 the sandstones and shales nearer Whitby, with thin beds of bad 

 coal. 



WHITBY. 



The bay between the abbey at Whitby and the cliff at 

 Sandsend is, by consent of antiquarians, the Aovvov /coA/Tro? of 

 Ptolemy, latinized into Dunum Sinus, a name perhaps preserved 

 to our times by Dunsley, in which the British element Dun 

 fortress may be recognized. Dunsley is near ' Old Mulgrave/ 

 and to it the Roman road, which certainly led from near Malton 

 by Cawthorn Camps to the sea-coast, is usually drawn, though 

 it be not perfectly traced. 



STREONESHALH is the old name by which Whitby first takes 

 its place in Anglo-Saxon history ; it is interpreted into Latin by 

 Bede as " sinus fari," the bay of the lighthouse. Camden trans- 

 lates it healthy bay, Gough explains halh, healh, or alh, as a 

 Teutonic word any eminent building ; but Dr. Young restores to 

 it the meaning of bay. Possibly the true version is to be found 

 in the Norse which was nearly the language of Northumbria 



