142 BAKERS NORTH YORKSHIRE. 



Bowes the principal branch of the stream is spanned by a natural 

 arch of Main Limestone which bears the name of God's Bridge, 

 and for some distance below the stream is usually swallowed up, 

 like the Dove and Bran by the Middle Oolite. On the south side 

 of the dale the Main Limestone girdles the edge of a steep moor 

 past Hope and Barningham,* beneath a rounded swell of gritstone 

 which sweeps away from the top of it to the summit of the ridge, 

 till at last, at the junction of the Greta with the Tees at Rokeby, 

 380 feet above the sea, we have the limestone down again to 

 the level of the river. The finest piece of cliff is at Gilmanscar, 

 opposite Bowes, a station for Draba incana, Saxiffaga hypnoides 

 and Orthothecium intricatum. The lowest strata of the dale are 

 those of the bed of the river at Rutherford bridge. Below 

 Brignall and Scargill the stream runs in a deep glen, with flag- 

 stone quarries and deep woods. Rokeby, with its rocky river 

 channel and thick woods and limestone scars, with Mortham's 

 Tower and Fitz-Hugh's tomb on the crest of the southern slope, 

 and the charming Dairy Bridge, and the steep sylvan bank of 

 the Tees where it breaks through the limestone immediately 

 beneath the Abbey Bridge, should be visited by all tourists. 



^ ' The scenery whose influence I can trace most definitely throughout his works, varied 

 as they are, is that of Yorkshire : of all his drawings I think that of the Yorkshire series 

 have most heart in them, the most affectionate, simple, unwearied, serious finishing of 

 truth. . . . His first conceptions of mountain scenery seem to have been taken from 

 Yorkshire, and its rounded hills, far winding rivers and broken limestone scars to have 

 formed a type in his mind to which he sought, so far as might be obtained, some corre- 

 spondent imagery in other landscapes. Hence he almost always preferred to have a preci- 

 pice low down upon the hillside, rather than near the top : liked an extent of rounded 

 slope above and the vertical cliff to water and valley better than the slope at the bottom 

 and the wall at the top, and had his attention early directed to those horizontal, or com- 

 paratively horizontal beds of rock which usually form the face of the precipices in the 

 Yorkshire dales, not, as in the Matterhorn, merely indicated by veined colouring on the 

 surface of the smooth cliff, but projecting or mouldering away in definite succession of 

 ledges, cornices and steps. . . . Other artists are led away by foreign sublimities and 

 distant interests, delighting always in that which is most markedly strange and quaintly 

 contrary to the scenery of their own homes. But Turner evidently felt that the claims 

 upon his regard possessed by those places which had first opened to him the joy and the 

 labour of his life could never be superseded. No Alpine cloud could efface, no Italian sun- 

 beam outshine the memory of the pleasant dales and days of Rokeby and Bolton : and 

 many a simple promontory dim with southern olive, many a lone cliff that stooped un- 

 noticed over some alien wave, was recorded by him with a love and delicate care that 

 were the shadows of old thoughts and long-lost delights whose charm yet hung like 

 morning mist above the chanting waves of Wharfe and Greta.'— Ruskin. 



