14 



JOHN CORDEAUX: LINCOLNSHIRE. 



season when the wide expanse of the hill country is ripening to the 

 harvest. View the imbounding prospect just south of Pelham's Pillar, 

 first northward across the continuous range of the Limber and Brock- 

 lesby Woods, and south-east over the rolling uplands to beyond 

 Croxby and Binbrooke, every yard of which is in the highest cultiva- 

 tion, under corn, turnips, and artificial grasses and clover. What 

 perhaps most strikes the observer is the absence of houses or farm- 

 steads, for the wold villages as a rule lie hid away in hollows of 

 the hills or along the main lines of traffic through the valleys, and at 

 the best it is even now a thinly populated district compared with the 

 rest of the county. North-east towards the Humber the wold breaks 

 away through the Gap (the scene of a sharp cavalry skirmish between 

 a detachment of the Newark garrison and the Parliamentarian 

 horse), beyond the ancient oak and beech of Riby Park and pleasant 

 Aylesby, of shorthorn fame, with the fertile middle marsh merging 

 into the rich pastures of the maritime plain ; there softened by 

 distance, rises the graceful water tower, 300 feet high, towering above 

 the blue smoke haze of Grimsby like a Florentine campanile, and 

 marking the entrance to the Royal Dock ; beyond this the broad 

 estuary of the river, Spurn Point and Dimlington high land, and on 

 the outmost verge the silver sheen of the North Sea. Turning south, 

 where the wold dips steeply to the central plain, we see the red-tiled 

 houses and grey church tower of Caistor nestling in a hollow of the 

 hills, with half the county spread out like a map, field succeeding 

 field, with infinite shades of yellow, brown, and green, mingled with 

 pinewood, coppice, and hedgerow timber, league beyond league to 

 where on the blue horizon, like a great rock, rises the stately pile of 

 Remigius — Lincoln Minster. All honour to the great Lord Yar- 

 borough, great great grandfather to the present earl, who with a lavish 

 expenditure, and aided by an enterprising tenantry, changed the 

 barren wastes into the garden of England, and who, as the inscription 

 on the pillar in the neighbouring wood states, between 1787 and 

 1823 planted 12,552,700 trees on his estates. 



Take again the view from the heath road south of Lincoln, above 

 Boothby-Graffoe, looking west across Somerton Castle and the level 

 district round Newark to the furthest bounds of Nottinghamshire ; 

 southward in one broad curve sweeps the wooded escarpment, mile 

 beyond mile to Grantham, the graceful spires of frequent churches 

 marking the position of each cliff village, till the oolite cliff becomes 

 merged into that lias ridge from which the lordly towers of Belvoir 

 overlook the wide vale of Trent. Still keeping our position, but 

 facing eastward, we overlook the breadth of Lincoln Heath, where the 



Naturalist, 



