n8 YORKSHIRE ARABLE FARMING 



very modern in their methods or their outlook, yet 

 lived pretty well out of the soil by energy and hard 

 work applied along traditional lines ; above all things, 

 they were farmers who made no attempt at being fine 

 gentlemen. 



Inland of Holderness proper runs a low-lying 

 alluvial valley from Hull northward known as the 

 Carrs, mostly wide grass meadows divided by open 

 ditches and requiring in great measure to be artificially 

 drained. At the head of this lower valley of the 

 Hull stands Driffield, the centre of a fine farming 

 district chiefly famous for its stock-raising and light horse 

 breeding. Our object, however, on that occasion 

 being crops rather than stock, we did not delay but 

 made at once for the Wolds, which from DrifTfield 

 begin to ascend gradually out of the green river plain. 

 Rapidly we found ourselves once again, but for the 

 last time, in the chalk country, more elevated and 

 boldly sculptured than the Lincoln Wolds, though 

 like them showing less open sheep-walk and more 

 cultivated land right up to the tops of the hills than 

 does the chalk in the south of England. The general 

 elevation of the Yorkshire Wolds is considerable, 

 touching in one place 800 feet, and as they are some- 

 what deeply cut, even on the eastern dip slope, by 

 one or two small river systems, the hills are steep 

 and sudden, though the most formidable gradient is 

 that presented by the westward facing scarp, where 

 it overlooks the Vale of York. The great fields, a 

 hundred acres in a single block, the sparse hedges, 

 and the smooth-flowing curves of the waterless hillsides, 

 all spoke of the chalk again ; the land was once more 

 full of sheep, while here and there a late sown field 

 of turnips showed how thin was the soil and how 

 near the white rock. Because of the steep slopes and 



