i86 baker's north Yorkshire. 



THE ESK DISTRICT (No. 4). 



This district includes the eastern portion of Cleveland. A 

 large proportion of its surface is made up of undulated heather- 

 land and broad ramified dales of the eugeogenous type of 

 character. The Esk flows through the district from west to 

 east, the principal dales which its branches run down being 

 upon the south side of it. The line of watershed round the 

 upper part of the river on the south extends into the Middle 

 Zone ; but on the north of the river the broad swgep of heather- 

 land, which occupies the greater part of the surface between 

 the Esk and the coast-line, nowhere from Castleton eastward 

 reaches an altitude of 1000 feet, and is mostly considerably 

 lower. It is a district of steep crumbling sea-cliffs and pleasant 

 dales and undulated swells of low heatherland, but including 

 very few ridges or peaks which reach even the Middle Zone, 

 and very little low-lying flat country ; and of our nine drainage 

 districts this is the only one within which no portion of the 

 Central Valley is comprised. 



Throughout the district, except along the course of the basaltic 

 dike, the Lower Oolite occupies the higher, and the Lias the lower 

 levels of the surface. South of the Esk we have the Lias at an 

 elevation of 1200 feet in Burton Head, and from thence declin- 

 ing due east to a height of rather more than 500 feet in the cliff 

 on the south side of Robin Hood's Bay. The Esk runs in a 

 synclinal depression of the strata, the Oolite coming quite down 

 to the shore on the north side, and very nearly so in the cliffs 

 on the south side of its mouth. But on the north side of the 

 river the beds rise again, and we have the Lias at an elevation 

 of nearly 1000 feet in Roseberry Topping and Guisbrough 

 Moor, and from this point sinking to t8o feet in Huntcliffe, 

 and 340 feet in the great cliff near Lofthouse. 



