"TEE BRITISH APENNINES:' 61 



Apennines," * a name which has been adopted by many 

 other writers. This extended range of hills and 

 mountains divides the North of England into two 

 distinct sections ; and though, when it gets to the 

 Cheviots and the South of Scotland, it sends out spurs 

 in all directions, and so covers much more of the 

 central parts of the country, yet the same is the case 

 there also. Throughout it is the great water-shed ; all 

 the rivers and streams which empty themselves on the 

 one side into the North Sea, on the other into the Irish 

 Channel and the Atlantic, have their source in its 

 recesses. It was for ages the boundary line between 

 rival and hostile kingdoms, separating, during a great 

 part of the Saxon period, along the whole of its long 

 line, the great Saxon and Danish kingdom of North- 

 umbria, which stretched from the Humber to the Frith 

 of Forth, from the Romano-Celtic kingdom of Strath - 

 clyde, extending from the Dee to the Clyde, to which it 

 formed a natural protection. " The tide," says Boyd 

 Dawkins, " of English colonisation rolled steadily west- 

 ward, until, at the close of the sixth century, the hilly 

 and impassable districts culminating in the Pennine 

 chain, and extending southwards from Cumberland and 

 Westmoreland, through Yorkshire and Derbyshire, 

 formed the barrier between the Brit- Welsh kingdoms 

 of Elmet and Strathclyde on the east, and the English 

 on the west." f Even the very powerful king Othel- 

 frith of Northumbria, at the beginning of the seventh 

 century, did not dare to face this formidable barrier, 

 but led his forces round and to the south of it. "He 

 marched along the line of the Trent, through Stafford- 



* Gibson's Edition of Camden's " Britannia," vol. ii., p. 127. 

 t " Cave Hunting," chap, iii., pp. 108, 109. 



