AND BRITISH CHANNEt. 



cient borough of Hartlepool presents a wonderful 

 example of the encroachment of the sea : it is 

 built upon a projecting point of land, which is 

 fast approaching to the state of an island. Part 

 of the borough lands are every season disappear- 

 ing, and the tide now flows within the gates of 

 the town. The wasting effects of the sea on the 

 soft friable stone of the isthmus on which the 

 town of Hartlepool stands, is altogether so strik- 

 ingly remarkable, that it seems curious and high- 

 ly interesting to the eye of a stranger. On the 

 southern side of the great sand-banks forming the 

 mouth of the Tees, we enter upon the coast of 

 Yorkshire, which extends to the estuary of the Yorkshii 

 River Hnmber, being upwards of a hundred miles. 

 This coast consists t:hiefly of sandstone and chalk- 

 bills, and in many places exposes a precipitous face 

 to the sea, which is acting upon it, and in general 

 producing its rapid destruction ; of this, many ex- 

 amples are familiar to those on the spot, parti- 

 cularly in the neighbourhood of Whitby and Scar- 

 borough. For a few miles both on the northern 

 and southern side of Flamborough-head Light- 

 house, the section of the coast is almost perpendi- 

 cular, and consists of chalk, intermixed with por- 

 tions of clay. At the eastern extremity, or pitch 

 of the head, the chalky cliff is about seventy feet 

 in height : from this point the coast decline^ all 

 the way to the Town of Bridlington, and from 



