336 TTNEDALE ESCAEPMENTS ; 



Viewed fi-om a hill west of Low Shield Green, the Marleymoor 

 Crags, it is a somewhat striking object. Sweeping round for 

 about two miles in an almost symmetrical arc of about one hun- 

 dred and twenty degrees, its bounding escarpment may remind 

 the eye of the crowning parapet of an amphitheatre ; and the 

 slope within bears out the resemblance by being partially ''benched 

 crescentwise " by minor terraces and ridges. The basin is nearly 

 closed in from where the Eede and Tyne meet beyond the hill 

 we are supposed viewing it from. 



It does not lie in my way to enter upon a general discussion 

 of the origin of coombes. I find it necessary, however, to advert 

 to the glacial theory of their formation, since, if this coombe be 

 purely ''glacier formed," the escarpment above and those within 

 must needs be so too. A good deal has been written, in con- 

 nection with this theory, about the Alpine Corrie or Cirque — a 

 gloomy precipitous bowl broken away on one side ; but I am aware 

 of only one writer who has treated specially of the shallow type 

 here represented, — namely, my colleague, Mr. Goodchild. The 

 bank of a stream opposite a point where it is joined by a power- 

 ful tributary, Mr. Goodchild points out, is apt to be scooped by 

 the entering current bearing against it, into a bay or shingly 

 coombe. In like manner, the resultant of forces at an obtuse- 

 angled junction of glaciers, he argues, should hollow out one 

 side of the valley. IN'ow this Buteland coombe chances to face 

 directly towards where the Tyne Yalley joins Eedesdale, and the 

 ice-stream might, on this principle, very well cannon, as it were, 

 somewhere about its position, and would have some chance to 

 hollow it out. 



To pass over such an obvious objection as that the eminences 

 intervening — eminences not scooped on the outer side — would 

 have taken the main force upon themselves, there is a feature 

 about the coombe that seems curiously to negative this purely 

 glacial theory of its origin. In the general sketch given above 

 of its form, it was not mentioned that its length, two miles, is 

 disposed along a slope. The amphitheatre, with its benches and 

 balustrade — to use the resemblance metaphorically — is tilted one 

 degree to one side. This arrangement naturally divides the 



