62 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



shire, avoiding thereby the difficult and easily defended 

 country of Derbyshire and East Lancashire," in order 

 to destroy the power of Strathclyde. 



Wild, and rugged, and sparsely peopled as many 

 parts of this huge mountain chain are now, few people 

 realise what it was in Saxon and early Norman times. 

 Commencing in the northern part of Staffordshire, 

 running up through Derbyshire and part of Cheshire, 

 dividing Yorkshire from Lancashire, and embracing a 

 good deal of both, it widened out and included the 

 mountains and fells of Cumberland and Westmoreland, 

 and much of Northumberland too. Joining there the 

 great Cheviot range, it spread nearly from sea to sea, 

 and entering Scotland, sent out in all directions 

 numerous spurs, under the protection of which nestled 

 half the southern Scottish counties, till it finally 

 terminated at the Clyde, the valley of which is the 

 only break for so great a distance in this long-con- 

 tinuing, elevated chain. Even that is but a short one : for 

 rising again upon the other side, passing near Stirling, 

 connected with the western Highlands, and containing 

 Ben Lomond in its centre, it traversed Breadalbane 

 and became incorporated with the Grampians, those 

 gigantic mountains which spread across Scotland from 

 east to west. There, in the vast congeries of the central 

 Highlands, the British Apennines are for a while lost, 

 merged in the enormous mass of those eternal hills; till 

 breaking out again at last north of Boss, they proceed 

 northwards, and, passing through Cromarty and Suther- 

 land, terminate at Cape Wrath. From this cape to the 

 centre of Staffordshire, if you draw a straight line, it 

 measures in length more than 400 miles ; but this 

 mountain chain is even longer, for once at least, in the 



