BY HUGS MILLEE. 325 



This has an important bearing on the preservation of the es- 

 carpment : for the time must come when a great talus will com- 

 pletely shield its front from further destruction except that by 

 granular disintegration and solution. I believe this to be the 

 cause, in great part, of the prominence of the "Whinsill escarp- 

 ment. Other escarpments may have been preserved locally in a 

 similar way, but it seems inevitable, unless another Glacial Period 

 sweep away the talus, as the last one did, that along a great 

 part of its range the denudation of this escarpment should come 

 almost to a standstill, while others continue to recede. 



This may account for the sudden forward starts of crag met so 

 frequently in the ^Northumbrian lake district. "Without insisting 

 on this, however, we may note in passing the narrow, rugged 

 ''gaps" and ''nicks," some of which in the middle ages were 

 such villainous turnpikes for robbers to exact tolls at. Most of 

 these have been occupied by broken materials, and have easily 

 been laid open. 



Leaving the " Rig-and-Fur, " we shall now take the outermost 

 extreme. 



Watershed Escarpments. It is not the main sheds only, but 

 subsidiary ones far too numerous to detail, that present us with 

 this phenomena. The crags upon the watershed between the 

 Tynes, classic to all readers of Dr. Bruce's great work on thi; 

 Roman "Wall, may be selected as type specimens. These are 

 the Sewingshields Crag and King's and Queen's Crags. 



If truly carved out of the earth by frosts and rains these crags 

 are a triumph. The King's Crag, including the talus-slope that 

 descends steeply, skirt-like, in front, rears its crest a hundred 

 and ten feet high upon the very saddle-back of the watershed ; 

 and sends its dipslopc towards the Queen's Crag behind, into a 

 trough not less than ninety feet deep. The finer escarpments of 

 the district we find to consist of a main bed of rock above, form- 

 ing the crag, and several minor beds gathered up under it : they 

 are, so to speak, more than one story high; and such is the 

 structure of the King's and Queen's Crags. 



Lt is in view of this splendid development of Cnig-and-Tuil, 



