72 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



least the northern counties which resisted him, still 

 more. According to William of Malmesbury, William 

 razed the city of York to the ground; he laid the 

 whole country waste from the Humber to the Tweed, 

 and rendered it so complete a scene of desolation that 

 for nine years neither the plough nor the spade was put 

 into the ground ; and such was the wretched state of 

 the inhabitants who escaped the sword, that they were 

 forced to eat dogs and cats, horses, and even human 

 flesh, to preserve their miserable existence. This 

 account is confirmed by Roger Hoveden and Simeon of 

 Durham, as well as by the concurrent testimony of all 

 the historians of those times. 



When such had been the state of things for eleven 

 hundred years, from one end of the British Apennines 

 to the other; prevailing always throughout the greater 

 part of the country bordering upon them, often through- 

 out the whole ; can we wonder that the primaeval forests 

 nourished, and that wild animals increased and mul- 

 tiplied, while man decayed, and would indeed have been 

 well-nigh extirpated if his numbers had not been re- 

 cruited by fresh importations from abroad ? An exactly 

 similar condition of things is described by Sir Walter 

 Scott when relating the destructive effects of the great 

 war between the English and Scottish for the posses- 

 sion of the Scottish throne at the commencement of the 

 fourteenth century, and I the rather quote from him be- 

 cause he refers to Douglas Dale, one of those wild valleys 

 which lie at the foot of the great mountain range itself. 



" Above all," says Sir Walter, " it was war-time, and 

 of necessity all circumstances of mere convenience were 

 obliged to give way to a paramount sense of danger. 

 The inhabitants, therefore, instead of trying to amend 



