196 

 THE DERWENT DISTRICT (No. 3). 



This district contains upwards of one-fourth part of the whole 

 of North Yorkshire, and is more than five hundred square 

 miles in area, so that it is one-half the size of an average English 

 county. It has a sea-line which is sixteen miles in length from 

 north to south, and from the coast to the watershed ridge on 

 the west the distance is forty miles. Physically it consists of 

 five tracts of country, as follows : — 



I. The JEugeogenous hills. — These are a range of undulated 

 hills which extend southward from the watershed ridge which 

 separates the tributary branches of Derwent from those of the 

 Esk and Tees, and which, with the dales that intersect it, fills 

 up the whole of the northern portion of the district. A line 

 may be drawn for nearly forty miles from west to east along 

 the ridge of these uncultivated moorlands, but from north to 

 south the total breadth of this range is under ten miles. Like 

 the Cleveland hills, they consist of Lower Oolitic strata based 

 upon Lias. The dales are comparatively broad and open, and 

 their streams run from north to south. As has been already 

 stated, the culminating peak of the main ridge is the hill 

 (Burton Head) from which branches of the Esk, Leven, and 

 Derwent all flow. This is distant twenty-five miles from the 

 point of coast which is due east of it, and in an eastern direction 

 from Burton Head the ridge declines, at first gradually, and 

 afterwards more suddenly, in altitude, being 880 feet lower 

 against the coast than in the summit-peak, which gives an 

 average declination of 35 feet per mile. The ridges which 

 divide the dales are in some cases almost as high as the main 

 ridge, as will be explained when we come to speak of the dales 

 in detail. This tract margins the coast from the anticlinal 

 axis southward as far as Scarborough, which is fully three-fourths 

 of the total sea-line of the district. 



