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THE WEST TEES DISTRICT (No. 9). 



This district includes the whole of the Yorkshire portion of 

 Upper Teesdale, so well-known and so deservedly attractive, 

 not to botanists and geologists only, but also to lovers of wild 

 and picturesque scenery. The Tees rises upon the slope of 

 Cross Fell, a mountain which towers upwards near the edge of 

 the great Pennine escarpment to a height of 2900 feet. This is 

 in Cumberland, and the streams which flow from the western 

 slope find their way into the Eden, whilst on the east only a 

 narrow spur of moorland separates the head waters of the Tees 

 from those of the Tyne. At the foot of this hill it is joined by 

 Trout Beck, and for five miles forms the boundary between 

 Westmorland and Durham. During this part of its course it flows 

 towards the south-east, a gradually augmenting slowly declin- 

 ing stream, almost lake-like in its breadth and stillness, with broad 

 undulated tracts of boggy, heathery moorland rising steeply from 

 it on either side. This long lake-like expansion is called the 

 Weel. From the foot of Trout Beck its course is amongst the 

 Lower Mountain Limestone, but not far from the head of 

 the Caldron Snout, at a height above the sea-level of 500 yards, 

 it enters the Basalt. 



At the Caldron Snout the scene changes. First the water 

 becomes rufiled, and then with a rush, the noise of which mingles 

 with the whirr of the grouse and the bleating of the mountain 

 sheep far away amidst these lonely hills, the stream breaks a 

 gorge through the main mass of the Basalt, forming in so doing 

 a series of broken rapids, leap after leap in tumultuous succes- 

 sion, the brown stream dashed by the first leap into foaming 

 whiteness and rushing from ledge to ledge down a deep winding 

 rocky channel, till at last it frees itself from the gorge, and 

 spreads out like a ray of light spreads out as it issues from a 

 prism, over a background of sharp-edged broken basaltic 



