^JO^ ma^: / ' "^ V f A SHORT GEOGRAPHY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS, JOHN RICHARD GREEN, M.A., LL.D., «« HONORARY FELLOW OF JESUS' COLLEGE, OXFORD, AND ALICE STOPFORD GREEN. WITH MAPS, ITonbon : MACMILLAN AND CO. 1879. Tk« Right ^ Tmtulatiim and R«/r$dmcH«m it Keurvtd, feO 5%^^ LONDON R. CLAY, SONS. AND TAYLOR, BREAD STREET HILI.. INTRODUCTION. No drearier task can be set for the worst of crimi- nals than that of studying a set of geographical text- books such as the children in our schools are doomed to use. Pages of " tables," " tables " of heights and " tables" of areas, " tables " of mountains and "tables" of table-lands, " tables " of numerals which look like arithmetical problems, but are really statements of population^: these, arranged in an alphabetical order or disorder, form the only breaks in a chaotic mass of what are amusingly styled " geographical facts," which turn out simply to be names, names of rivers and names of hills, names of counties and names of towns, a mass barely brought into grammatical shape by the needful verbs and substantives, and doited over with isolated phrases about mining here and cotton-spinning there, which pass for Industrial Geography. Books such as these, if books they must be called, are simply appeals to the memory ; they arc hand- 175481 viii INTRODUCTION. books of mnemonics, but they are in no sense band- books of Geography. Geography, as its name impHes, is an " earth-picturing," a presentment of earth or a portion of earth's surface in its actual form, and an indication of the influence which that form has exerted on human history or human society. To give such a picture as this of our own country, in however short and simple a fashion, is the aim of the present work. It does not pretend to furnish the learner with every possible detail of height or area. What it seeks to do is to give him some notion of what in form and surface his fatherland is hke, to set before him a broad picture of these islands in the strange diversity of their structure. With this purpose it endeavours not only to point out the re- lations of the British island-group to the European continent as a whole, but to build up, step by step, the geographical skeleton of each of its parts, to trace the mountain structure of each country as defining its plains, to show how the combination of mountain and plain shapes its river system, or again how the union of all these parts furnishes a ground- work on which the national life in its local forms has necessarily shaped and moulded itself, and by whose character much of its political, and all of its industrial life has as necessarily been determined. I INTRODUCTION. ix That such an aim has been imperfectly realised in the present book its writers know well. But if their attempt to realise it does somewhat to make the study of Geography a more living and attractive thing the errors of detail which such a work can hardly have escaped may well be pardoned. For the study of Geography, small as is the part allotted to it in actual teaching, is one which must occupy a foremost place in any rational system of primary education. When the prejudices and traditions of our schools and schoolmasters have passed away — as they must pass away before a truer conception of the growth of a child's mind, and of the laws which govern that growth — the test of right teaching will be found in the correspondence of our instruc- tion with the development of intellectual activity in those whom we instruct. The starting-point of edu- cation will be the child's first question. And the child's first question is about the material world in which it finds itself. So long as every sight and every sound is an object of wonder, and of the curiosity that comes of wonder, life will be a mere string of " whats " and " whys." With an amusing belief in the omniscience of his elders, the child asks why the moon changes and what are the stars, why the river runs and where the road goes to, why the X INTRODUCTION. hills are so high and what is beyond them. To answer these questions as they should be answered is to teach the little questioner Geography. Each of the divisions into which Geography breaks does its part in his training, as the picture of the earth in which he lives grows into distinctness before him. He may never hear of Physiography, but he learns in simple outline what are the forces that tell through heat and cold or wind or rain on the form of the earth, and make it the earth we see. The name of Physical Geography may never reach him, but he gets a notion of what the earth's form actually is, of the distribution of land and sea, of mountain and plain over its surface, of the relative position of continents and of countries, of the "why" rivers run and the " where " roads run to. As the struc- ture of the world thus becomes distinct to the child he sees why races have settled, why nations lie within their boundaries, why armies have marched and battles have been fought, why commerce has taken one road or another over sea and land, and thus gathers his Historical Geography without knowing it. So as he watches how mountains divide men or rivers draw them together, how hill-line and water- parting become bounds of province and shire, how the town grows up by the stream and the port by INTRODUCTION. xi the harbour-mouth, the boy lays the foundation of liis Political Geography, though he never sees a " table of counties," or learns by rote a " list of populations." Studied in such a fashion as this Geography would furnish a ground-work for all after instruction. It is in fact the natural starting-point for all the sub- jects of later training. History strikes its roots in Geography ; for without a clear and vivid realiza- tion of the physical structure of a country the incidents of the hfe which men have lived in it can have no interest or meaning. Through History again Politics strike their roots in Geography, and many a rash generalization would have been avoided had political thinkers been trained in a knowledge of the earth they live in, and of the influence which its varying structure must needs exert on the varying pvjlitical tendencies and institutions of the peoples who part its empire between them. Nor are history or politics the only studies which start naturally from uch a ground- work. Physical science will claim • very day a larger share in our teaching : and science finds its natural starting-point in that acquaint- :\\)ce with primary physics which enables a child to know how earth and the forms of earth came to be what they are. Even language, hindrance as its xii INTRODUCTION. premature and unintelligent study has been till novv to the progress of education, will form the natural consummation of instruction when it falls into its proper place as the pursuit of riper years, and is studied in its historical and geographical relations. Such a dream of education. will doubtless long re- main a dream ; but even as a dream it may help us to realize the worth of Geography, and to look on the study of it in a grander as well as a more rational light than has commonly been done. It is at any rate such a dream as this that has encouraged its writers to attempt the present book. One word may be added as to their share in its authorship. Both the writers whose names appear on the title-page are responsible for the general plan of the work, as well as for the part of it which relates to England. The rest is wholly due to the second of them. JOHN RICHARD GREEN. CONTENTS. ENGLAND. CHAP. PACH I. Introductory .. i II. General View of England and Wales .... 19 III. The Coast of England and Wales 29 IV. The Mountain Groups 40 V. The Upland Ranges 57 VI. The Plains 68 VII. The River System 75 VIII. The English Counties 1 S IX. The Northumbrian Counties 114 X. The Counties of the Ribble and Mersey Basins . 123 XI. The Counties of the Severn Basin 133 xiv CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE XII. The Counties of the Humber Basin !45 Xni. The Counties of the Wash 162 XIV. The East Anghan Counties 172 XV. The Counties of the Thames Basin . . . . . 177 XVI. The Southern Counties 194 XV il. The South-western Counties 205 WALES. I. General View of Wales . 216 II. The Welsh Counties 228 SCOTLAND. I. Introductory 245 11, The Highlands 251 III. The Lowland Hills 269 IV. The Lowland Plain 27S V. The River System 2S5 CONTENTS. XV CHAP. '•Aiili 10 ;:''.'' 30 40 so Ikai/ja «ni 1. -, J. m . i { -J THE VuRSlTY or A SHORT GEOGRAPHY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Europe and the British Isles. — The most im- portant group of European islands, whether in size or political consequence, is situated in the Atlantic Ocean, just off the western coast of the European mainland. This is the group of the British Isles. In number they exceed five thousand, but the bulk of them are mere masses and shelves of bare rock, and only two are of geographical importance. The first. Great Britain, is a long, narrow, irregular slip of land with jagged edges, running nearly north and south, and parted by a sea-channel from the nearest point* of the mainland ; the second, Ireland, lying to the westward of it, and of little more than a third its size, « B 2 GEOGRAPHY. [chaf. is a country whose short, broad form presents a striking contrast to that of Britain, and which re- sembles it in httle save the torn and jagged character of its coast-line. The shallowness of the seas which sur- round this island group shows that it once formed a part of the adjacent continent. A hundred and eighty miles to the west of Ireland, the sea-bottom of the Atlantic falls precipitously into a vast basin, seven thousand feet in depth, which represents the ocean that in some past geological epoch washed the western shores of the European mainland. But within this line, to the eastward, the water suddenly shallows ; and around the coasts of the existing islands the sea-bed is of comparatively insignificant depth, varying from three hundred feet deep in the English Channel to seventy feet in the North Sea between Britain and Germany. This slightly-sunk sea-bed, with the British Islands which still rise above the surface of its waves, formed, in fact, the extremity of a table- land that stretched eastward as far as Russia, and part of which still exists in the plain of Northern Europe. It was a slight de- pression of this table-land that allowed the sea to cover a great part of its surface, and by forming the inlets now known as the English, the Irish, and the Northern Channels, to break what remained into islands, and to part these islands from the rest of the European Continent. Their Physical Resemblance.— It is this iden- tity with the Continent which explains the physical structure of the British Isles. If we look at any general map of Europe, we see that the northern part of the I.] INTRODUCTORY. 3 European continent consists of a vast plain, stretch- ing from the Steppes of Asia to the British Channel ; while at right angles to this plain, in a direction from north to south, runs out a peninsula, that of Sleswig and Jutland, whose line is carried northward by the Danish isles and the mountain mass which con- stitutes Scandinavia. Both these features of Northern Europe are repeated in the British Islands. The great northern plain is prolonged across the bed of the North Sea to form the southern half of Great Britain and the centre of Ireland. On the other hand, the characteristics of the Scandinavian peninsula repro- duce themselves in the northern projection of Britain, in its long, narrow, and rugged form, and in the nature of its mountain-ranges, which stiike down the western side of the island from north to south, fronting the ocean on their western side for the most part in a steep wall of heights, and sinking slowly to the eastern sea in more gradual slopes, down ^^hich are thrown all the more important rivers of the country. Physical Characteristics of the British Islands. — But though the two great islands of the British group are thus linked together by their relatioji to the Continent, their severance from it has been the cause of many points of contrast, I. Climate. — Their insular position has a marked effect on their climate. It gives them wannth, it preserves them from extremes of heat and cold, and it produces an abundance of moisture. {a.) The British Isles are much warmer tha other countries, save Norway, whether in Europe or B 2 4 GEOGRAniY. [chap. America, which lie so far to the northward. The mean temperature of Ireland in the fifty-second degree of latitude is the same as that of the United States of America in the thirty-second degree of latitude, though at this point the latter are situated more than two thousand miles nearer the equator, (d.) Again, in these islands great changes of te??ipe- rature are unknown. Scotland lies at about the same distance from the equator as Central Russia ; but while the mean difference between summer heat and winter cold is in Scotland only nineteen degrees, in Central Russia it amounts to forty-eight degrees. This mild and equable climate is caused by the fact that all winds coming to the British Isles must first pass over the sea, and in the case of the most frequent of the British winds, the west wind, over great spaces of sea. They are therefore cooler in summer and warmer in winter than winds which travel over tracts of land parched and burnt by the sun or frozen by bitter cold. As all parts of the British Isles are bathed in the same sea-winds, so all share alike in the advantages they bring; and there is scarcely any difference between the winter climate of the southern coast of Britain and that of the Shetlands in the far north. {c.) But as the winds cross the water they gather moisture, which falls in rain when they touch the colder land. Hence the rainfall of these islands is greater than that of the rest of Europe, its average being over three feet. The prevailing wind is from the west, the number of days on which a westerly 1.1 INTRODUCTORY. S wind blows exceeding the number of days on which the wind is easterly in a proportion of forty-five to twenty-eight. This west wind, laden with the moist vapours of the ocean which it has traversed, first breaks upon Ireland ; and hence the climate of this island is damper than that of the rest of the British group. Ireland has an average of two hundred and eight rainy days in the year. As its western mountain- chains, however, are comparatively low, the rain- clouds are not effectually caught by them, and so dis- tribute their moisture more evenly over the whole surface of the country than in the Island of Britain, the difference between the rainfall on the eastern and western coasts of Ireland being only nine inches. In Britain, on the other hand, the mountains of the west are high enough to intercept a large proportion of the moisture borne along by this wind, and in some dis- tricts of this part of the country the rainfall reaches a ratio of more than seven feet a year. A belt of rainy country thus extends along Western Britain, but this excess of waters, through the mountainous nature of the ground, is carried seaward in rapid torrents, which are of little avail for navigation or the promotion of fertility. In the eastern plains of Britain the rainfall still remains considerable, amount- ing to from one and a half to three feet in the year ; but the undulating surface of the country, while it hinders its accumulation in marshes, conduces to the gathering of its waters together into rivers of greater size and more gradual descent than on the west, and thus renders tliem of greater utility to the soil. 6 GEOGRAniY. [chap. {d.) Tills moderate climate and abundant supply of moisture co-operate to promote the fertility of the British Islands. Wheat can be cultivated even in their northernmost regions ; and over a large part of Britain it maybe grown at a height of looo feet above the sea-level; while in the mountains of the north, where this is impossible, it is replaced by hardier grains, such as oats and barley. But over the bulk of Ireland and in large districts of Britain, especially in the western half of it, where the rainfall is injurious to crops, the ground is more profitably used for pastures, which are nowhere richer than here. II. Physical Structure. — Important as are these results of their climate, the British Isles owe yet more to the pecuHarities of their physical structure. In hardly any part of the world is such a variety of geological formations to be seen as in Britain ; almost every kind of rock, from the oldest to the most recent deposits, is in turn brought to the surface in some part of these islands. The result of this is that the mineral treasures which exist in some of these formations are here easily accessible, and that in spite of the mineral resources of America, Africa, and Australia, Britain still remains the most productive mining country in the world. Its rocks contain iron, tin, copper, lead, zinc, and salt ; but they contain a yet more valuable possession in their vast beds of coal. The coal-measures of Britain, which extend over an area of nearly 3000 square miles, have been the centre from which the industrial movement of modern I.] INTRODUCTORY. 7 limes in Europe and America has received its main impulse. In Britain itself they are the source of vast industries ; for manufactures of iron, steel, cutlery, hardware, glass, pottery, cotton, wool, and other tex- tile fabrics cluster round the coal-beds wherever they are found. From Ireland, indeed, coal is absent ; and it is through the want of it that, in spite of some mineral resources, this country remains without manu- factures, save that of linen, which flourishes in those northern parts which adjoin the coal-beds of North Britain. But this contrast only brings into stronger light the physical characteristics which have given its mineral wealth to Britain itself. III. Position. — As the mining and manufacturing industry of Britain is a result of its peculiar physical structure, so the commerce of these islands is in great part a result of their peculiar geographical position. Placed as they are at the north-western angle of Europe, they command the whole commerce of its northern countries, as it passes through the North Sea and the British Channel ; while they lie in the most direct route for vessels bound from America to Europe. Eondon in fact is placed at what is very nearly the geometrical centre of those masses of land which make up the earth-surface of the globe ; and is thus, more than any city of the world, the natural point of convergence for its different lines of navigation. The position too of these islands in the ocean gives them over neighbouring European countries the advan- tage of tides high enough to carry large vessels up the estuaries and harbours, whose abundance along 8 GEOGRAPHY. [chaf. their coasts furnishes another element of commercial importance. IV. Political Geography. — Again, the peculi- arities of the physical structure of the British Islands have told on their political history. I. Political and Social Differences of Ireland and Great Britain. — To them are due the social and political differences which so long parted Ireland from Great Britain, and which still retard their practical union. Ireland is distinguished from Great Britain by its size, as well as by the characteristics both of its posi- tion and of its physical structure. Its area amounts to 30,000 square miles ; its greatest length is 290 miles, and its greatest breadth 175 miles. It is thus little more than a third as large as the Island of Great Britain. It differs from it as strongly in position as in structure. While it is separated from America by the whole width of the Atlantic Ocean, it is cut off from Europe by the greater island to the westward of it. This isolated position has to a great extent pro- tected it from foreign invasion, and has preserved in the country its ancient inhabitants with but little change. But at the same time the island has been in great measure shut out from direct contact with the general civilizing influences of Europe, and it was only in comparatively late times that its wandering tribes were brought within the full scope of European civilization. The remarkable unity of its physical structure, so strongly in contrast with the variety of that of Great Britain, has had even greater social results. It is in fact reflected in the unvaried charac- I.] INTRODUCTORY. 9 ter of its industry. The centre of the island forms a broad, level plain, broken only by lakes, and traversed by one large river, round which runs a circle of hills and low mountains, which form a wide belt along the northern and southern shores, and a narrower belt along the eastern and western coasts. The moisture of the Irish climate, which results from the position of this island in the Atlantic Ocean, pro- duces a constant rainfall which makes pasture more profitable than tillage; and this vast central plain has in all ages been mainly a grazing-ground for cattle. Manufactures, save in the north, there are none. The uniform character of the rocks, from which coal is absent, and which contain metals in but small quantities, have prevented any general growth of manufacturing industry, and thus re- stricted the great bulk of th2 inhabitants to agri- cultural employments. 2. Political Division of Great Britain itself. — While physical characteristics thus distinguish Ire- land from Great Britain as a whole, they have also been the chief causes which have brought about the division of Great Britain itself into three sepa- rate realms, and which have to a gre«it extent deter- mined the social and political character of each of these portions. Taken as a whole, Britain covers an area of 84,000 square miles, its length is about 600 miles from north to south, while its breadth varies from 33 to 367 miles. But it is only in com- paratively recent times that the island has become a single nation. For many centuries it was divided lo GEOGRAPHY [chap. into three separate countries, that of Scotland to the north, and Wales to the west, while the southern mass of the island bore the name of England. 3. Political Geography of Scotla?id. — Scotland owed its separate existence partly to the form of Great Britain, and partly to the physical differences between the northern and the bulk of the southern parts of the island. The disproportion between the length and the breadth of Britain threw a great obstacle in the way of political unity in times when communi- cations were slow and difficult. Still greater obsta- cles were interposed by the physical difference be- tween the districts to the north of the Cheviots — the hills which formed the frontier between Scotland and England — and those to the south of them. While the latter consisted for the most part of low hills and open plains, Scotland was little more than a continuous mass of high mountains separated by a strip of level ground from another mass of bare and lofty hills which extend to the border. This natural division of the country into Highlands, or the mountain district, and Lowlands, or the district of the hills and the plains, was reflected in the twofold character of its population, the Gael of the High- lands being distinguished from the Enghshman of the ]^owlands by differences of race and speech which long held them apart as two separate peoples. Within each district too the broken character of the country tended to promote the division of its inhabitants into separate clans or bodies obeying their special chief- tains, and hindered all efforts to bring them to any I.] INTRODUCTORY. n real national oneness. The barrenness also of their soil, and the inclemency of their climate long doomed the Scotch to extreme poverty ; while their position, which cut them off from the civilizing influence of Europe, kept them in a state of barbarism. On the other hand, these hardships helped in creating a thrift and endurance which enabled the smaller country to hold its own against its greater neighbour. Scotland is only about half the size of England, its area being but 24,000 square miles, its extreme length 286, and its breadth varying from t^^ to 160 miles; while in wealth and population it was greatly inferior. But in spite of this disproportion it preserved its indepen- dence till a peaceful union was brought about by one of the Scotch kings mounting the English throne. Since this union its physical structure has again played a great part in its social history. Whilst the general progress of civilization has removed much of the dissociating effects of its mountainous character, the discovery of rich coal-beds in the level strip between Highlands and Lowlands has given birth to manu- factures and large towns, and, with the upgrowth of agriculture in the south through the energy of its people, has turned the poverty of the country into comparative wealth. 4. Political Geography of Wales. — The severance of Wales from the mass of the country was due to only one of the circumstances which promoted the separate existence of Scotland. Wales consists of a tract of rugged, mountainous country projecting into the Irish Sea from the western coast of Southern 12 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. Britain, whose boimdary-line on the eastern side runs where these mountains sink into the plains of which Central England is made up. It thus resembles Scot- land in its general features, save that its mountains nowhere rise so high as those of Scotland, and that it is far smaller, being only a seventh the size of England, and covering an area of but 7,400 square miles. It was in fact a small mountain fastness in which the older, or Celtic, peoples of Northern Britain took refuge when the more open country w^as conquered by the English invaders, and where they long preserved their independence. Wales, like Scotland, remained for ages poor and barbarous ; it w^as in the same way cut off by England from contact with civilized Europe, while the bleak moorlands and slaty hills which cover most of its surface long afforded only a thin pasture for small sheep and cattle, and supported but a few inhabitants. But again, like Scotland, Wales has in more recent times owed a vast social change to its physical structure. In the northern and southern parts of the country rich beds of coal, iron, and slate have been found and worked; and in these districts the general solitude and poverty of the country is now exchanged for busy industry and a teeming population. 5. Political Geography of England. — The rest of the island, south of the Cheviots and west of Wales, formed the kingdom of England. It is far the largest of the three, for it is 350 miles long, and has an area of 50,000 square miles. In appearance it at once resembles and differs from the neighbouring I.] INTRODUCTORY. 13 countries, for its mountains are less bold than those of Scotland or Wales, while its plains are less mono- tonous than those of Ireland. In fertility and general wealth it is far more favoured than any. Its surface is more varied ; it consists mainly of wide undulating plains, but these are broken by low uplands in the south and east, and by masses of mountains and hills in the north and south-west. The undulating character of most of its surface not only facilitates communication and road-making, but promotes the gathering together of the waters of the country into streams and rivers. No other part of the British Isles can compare with England in the complete- ness of its system of rivers, which are spread over the face of the land in an order more perfect than that of almost any other European country. Unlike the mere mountain torrents which arc so common in Scotland and Wales, these rivers form a network of navigable waters and carry fertility to all its plains. The fruitfulness of England is aided by its climate, a climate less damp than that of Ireland and less cold than that of Scotland, but sufficiently varied in the amount of its rainfall to allow the growth of grain over the eastern half of the country, while it provides rich pastures through the western. To these advan- tages we may add that of mineral wealth, in a vast extent of coal-beds and rich deposits of iron and other metals, as well as salt-mines and beds of valu- able clay. But much as it owes to its physical structure, England owes hardly less to its geographical position. It lies closer to Europe than either Scotland, Z| GEOGRAPHY. " [chap. Ireland, or Wales, and thus possesses greater advan- tages for trade and commerce, while its harbours are situated in more sheltered seas than those of its fellow-countries. Both its structure and position have combined to shape its political history. Easy communication with the Continent has brought England within reach of its civilizing influences, as it has left her open to de- scents of invaders, who have driven before them her older inhabitants to the mountains of the north and west. Thus it has come about that the Englishmen of Southern Britain are more recent incomers into the land than the Gael of the Highlands or the Cymry of Wales. That their conquest of the country was possible was due in great measure to the absence of mountain-barriers such as checked their progress in these latter districts ; but it is the absence of such barriers which in later days enabled government to act easily over the whole face of the land, and soon drew its various tribes together into one people and a highly organized realm. With such advantages of structure and position, and with the far greater wealth and population that came of them, it was inevitable that England should in the long run gather the neigh- bouring realms round it, and that it should form by far the most important element in the political body which has resulted from their union — the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. General Results of the Character of the British Group. — From these special consequences of the position and structure of each of its parts on I.] INTRODUCTORY. 15 their character and history, we may now proceed to sain up some of the more general consequences of their structure and position as a whole. The fact that they have been cut off from the Continent of Europe by a belt of sea which forms them into islands, has pro- duced most important results on the character of these countries, on the growth of their civilization, on the training' of their peoples, and on the part they have played in the world's history. (i.) The strip of sea which runs between the British Isles and the Continent has greatly influenced the progress of their inhabitants from barbarism to civi- lization. Though foreign conquerors have in early ages been able to cross over the sea to Britain ; the English Channel and the North Sea have long formed a barrier broad enough to prevent perpetual invasion and disquiet from without, and to give such a measure of security as was needed for the well-being of the British peoples. But on the other hand these seas have not been wide enough to shut out the civilizing influences of Europe; foreign trade, and wealth, and knowledge have been within easy reach of its people. And in some cases the channel which parts these islands from Europe has even invited civilization to their shores. It has made them a safe place of shelter for rnen driven out from their own lands by poverty, by misgovern men t, or by persecution, and wave after wave of immigrants fiave thus been brought to our coasts, who have carried with them a knowledge of arts and manu- factures. iG GEOGRAPHY. [chap. -(2.) Again, it is owing to the sea that Great Britain has won its place as the greatest naval power of the world. This greatness has been the natural consequence of men living in an island where all trade and communication with other peoples is wholly impossible except that which is carried on across seas both dangerous and stormy, and where sailors are trained to all kinds of peril and hard- ship. The training of the people to this seafaring life is made more complete and widespread by the very form of the islands, long, narrow, with shores deeply indented by creeks and bays, so that no spot in the very heart of Great Britain could be more than 120 miles from the sea, and most of its inhabitants must at all times have been familiar with the ocean. (3.) The agricultural, manufacturing, and comniercial industries which the British Isles owe to their physical structure and European position enable them to main- tain a very \2LYgQ population for the size of the country, more than thirty-one millions of inhabitants. The people are scattered indeed over the country in a most unequal way — sometimes, in a great city like London, over 9000 are crowded together in a square mile, while again, in some desert mountainous district of Northern Britain, scarcely thirteen persons can be found in the same space. But this distribution of popu-^ lation is mainly determined by the distribution of mineral wealth, especially of coal with its accom- panying manufactures : in all mining districts the people are thickly gathered together in large towiis, I] INTRODUCTORY. 17 while agricultural districts with their rural villages and hamlets are but thinly peopled. The various countries in fact support a population exactly in proportion to the amount of their coal-measures. England has an average of 422 people to the square mile, Wales of 164, Scotland of 112. In Ireland there are 161 persons to the square mile, an unusually large number for a mainly agricultural country. (4.) The most important result of this large population and of the narrow space of land within which it is confined is our colonization of distant countries, and the enormous consequenf "growth of the political import- ance of Great Britain as an imperial power. As the inhabitants of these islands have grown too many for the narrow limits of their home, they have gone out from it to America, Africa, Asia, and Australia, to conquer new lands, or to found settlements of people speaking the English tongue, and taking with them English laws and customs. Tiiese colonies have so increased in number and extent, that while the whole area of the British Isles (121,692 square miles) docs not represent more than one-sixteen-hundredth part of the surface of the globe, and is not equal to one- thirtieth part of the continent of Europe, the dominion of Britain now extends over more than one-seventh of the dry land of the world, that is, over a territory equal to sixty-seven times the area of the British Isles, and containing more than 200 millions of inhabitants. The English language is spoken by 88 millions of people as their mother-tongue, and if we include men of other races who understand the language, by c x8 GEOGRArHY. [CHAr. I. at least loo millions — a number which promises soon to increase two- or three-fold, as commercial interests extend yet further. It is owing then in great part to geographical circumstances that the political influence of the English race has become one of the most important facts of the world's history. Plan of the Book. — In our survey of the British islands, we shall follow the ord€r which is determined by the social and material importance of their various parts. First we shall describe the geo- graphical and political divisions of England .with its dependency of Wales, then those of Scotland, and lastly those of Ireland. Country. Area ill square miles. p. pulation. England Wales Scotland Great Britain . . . Ireland Isle of Man and Channel Islands United Kingdom . . 51,005 7398 30,463 21. 495. 131 1,217,13s 3.360,018 88,866 32,523 303 26,072,284 5-412,377 144,638 121,692 31,629,299 CHAPTER ir. GENERAL VIEW OF ENGLAND AND WALES. Character of the Country. — From our survey of the general structure of the British Islands we now therefore turn to survey that portion of them which we know as Southern Britain, or the countries of England and Wales. The first object on which our view must be fixed is the character of the land itself, for it is this that determines the inner history, progress, and temper of a people by the daily in- fluence it exerts on all their enterprises. VVe must learn therefore to know the actual surface of Southern Britain — where it is broken by rocky mountains, where its rivers have formed valleys rich with corn and fruits, and where its broad uplands furnish pastures for flocks. Nor is any of this knowledge useless. We get to understand the tnic importance of these facts as we watch how from age to age the inexorable lie of the land has com- pelled very different races and generations of men to live and build their cities by the same rivers in sheltered valleys or in fertile plains ; to till the ground in the C a 20 GEOGRAniY. [chap. ii. same fruitful districts ; to make their roads along the same lines marked out by nature, sometimes across level plains, sometimes threading narrow valleys between the hills, now turning aside to reach some river-ford, and then rising over a mountain pass where the line of hills dips so as to form a gap in the forbidding heights. We learn why it is that the great English roads are as old as the earliest times told of by any history of England, and why so many towns and even villages have a story that goes back to the first beginnings of our people. And many things hard to understand in history become easy as we know the outer circumstances which led to the events of which we read. England and Wales, taken together, form a very irregular triangle, lying between three seas, the North Sea, the Irish Sea, and the English Channel, and having but one land boundary, that on the north, where England adjoins Scotland. The border line is here marked by the short chain of the Cheviot Moun- tains, and by those rivers which flow from either extremity of this line of hills to the sea, the Solway Firth on the south-east, and the Tweed on the north- east (see Frontispiece). At first sight the tract within this triangle may seem a mere confusion of hills, and plains, and rivers, in which it is impossible to distinguish any sort of plan. Nevertheless, it is certain that order can be found in all this seeming disorder if we begin by seizing clearly the great general divisions marked by nature herself. The Water-parting. — For this purpose, the first ENGLAND AND WALES. COASTLINB AND WATBRPAKTING. %nn^i ^ >^ *'een the Thames estuary and the D c;4 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. Straits of Dover are the North and South Forelands^ and the Dover cliffs, formed by the North Downs. II. The south coast of England lies, from the South Foreland to the Land's End, on the English Channel, — a belt of sea which widens westward into the Atlantic Ocean, and on the east opens through the Straits of Dover into the North Sea. These narrow straits, only twenty miles wide at one place, part England from the nearest Continental country, France. {a) There is but one large island adjoining the shore, the Isle of Wight, situated near the central part of the coast, with but a narrow passage between it and the mainland, called on the north-east Sj>ithead, and on the north-west the Solent. At some distance from the Land's End, the most south-western point of the British Islands, is the small cluster of tlie Scilly Islands. {b.) The coast to westward and eastward of its central point is, as we have seen, of very distinct character. From the cliffs of Dover to the Isle of: Wight the sHghtly curved shore is only marked by the low clay spit of Dunge Ness, and the chalk cliffs of Beachy Head, at the extremity of the upland range of the South Downs. On the other hand, to the west of the Isle of Wight, the bays formed by the curvature of the shore are parted by several projecting headlands) — S. Alban's Head, the Bill of Portla7id, a long spur' of rock striking out seawards, and Start Poi7it, a promontory of very old and hard rock, in strong contrast to the soft chalk of Beachy Head. The extreme south-western part of the coast is formed III.] COAST OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 35 by two abrupt masses of volcanic rock thnist out into the sea from the Cornish heights, Lizard Hcad^ and the Land's End, which enclose between them Mounfs Bay. (r.) This coast contains three very great and important harbours. Two of these, Portsmouth Har- bour and Southampton Water, lie directly behind the Isle of Wight. Portsmouth, completely landlocked, forms a magnificent port, and is the great naval arsenal of Britain : Southampton has a large trade with Europe and the colonies. The third harbour, Plymouth Sound, in the S.W., is the chief naval arsenal of the country. III. The west coast of England, extending from the Land's End to the Solway Firth, is parted from Ireland by a narrow belt of sea. In its widest central part this is known as the Irish Sea, from whence it opens out into the Atlantic Ocean by the narrower passage of St. George's Channel on the south, and the strait of the North Channel on the north. {a.) Two islands lie in this sea. The Isle of Man, half-way between England and Ireland, is thrown across the centre of the Irish Sea. The Isle of Anglesea lies close to the coast of Wales so as to seem part of the mainland ; the Menai Strait, which cuts it off from Wales, being so narrow as to be crossed by a suspension-bridge. {b.) The four bays of the western coast differ much in character. While two of them, those to the north and the south, are narrow, and terminate in river estuaries, the two central ones consist of wide inlets 36 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. of the sea formed by the curvature of the shore. All alike, however, lie between rocky and mountainous peninsulas running out into the sea in the same south- westerly direction. The northernmost opening in the coast is the estuary of the Solway Firth, which severs England from Scotland, and is bounded only on the southern side by English land. To the south of this firth lies a deep curve formed by the Irish Sea as it washes in upon a belt of low sandy shore between the mountains of Cumberland on the north, and the mountains of Wales on the south. The low coast-line which curves inwards between these heights is interrupted by Morecambe Bay, lying under the Cumbrian hills, and is further cleft by many wide river estuaries, of which that of the Mersey is the most important. These rivers form ports of great value, whose westerly position gives them the chief trade with Ireland and America ; the harbour at the estuary of the Mersey is only second in importance to that of the Thames itself The next great bend of the shore forms Cardigan Bay, and is of a very different character from the last. It lies encircled by the Welsh hills, the line of its curve being sharply broken to the north by a narrow ridge of high rocks thrust out from the mountain masses which bound it on this side; while to the east the hills sweep in a semicircle round the bay, sinking lower as they near its southern boundaries. Owing to ; these encircling hills and to the evenness of the coast- line, which is only broken by very small rivers, this great bay is useless for trade and shipping. To north III.] COAST OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 37 and south of it lie lesser inlets of the sea. On the north is Carnafvon Bay, between the Isle of Anglesea and the rocky tongue of land which forms the penin- sula of Carnarvon : on the south St. Bride's Bay lies at the very extremity of the peninsula. Beside St. Bride's Bay a long creek running inland from the sea forms the only harbour of this district, Milford Baven. The fourth opening of the west coast differs very much from the last two in form and character. Just opposite to the estuary of the Thames, a deep arm of the sea, the Bristol Channel, is driven between the mountainous country of Wales on the north, and the highlands of the long peninsula which lies to the south with its bold and rocky shores. Constantly narrowing as it stretches more inland, this channel finally passes into a great river estuary, the mouth of the Severn^ which here breaks the coast-line. The harbour of Bristol, formed in this estuary, has a large shipping trade, chiefly across St. George's Channel with Ireland. The shores of the Bristol Channel are curved in its wider part into lesser bays, Swansea and Carmarthen Bays on the north, Bideford and Bridgewater Bays on the south. {c.) The headlands of the west coast are all formed by projecting spurs of rock thrown out from the three mountain groups which front the sea on this side. The chief among them are St. Bee's Head, a height jutting out from the Cumbrian Hills between the Solway Firth and the great bay formed by the Irish Sea ; Great Orme's Head, on the Welsh coast to the 3S GEOGRAPHY. [chap. south of this bay ; Holyhead on Holyhead Island, and Braich-y-Pwll, on either side of Carnarvon Bay j St. DavicPs Head^ at the southern extremity of Cardigan Bay ; St. Gowan's Jleadand Ha7'tland Point, guarding the opening of the Bristol Channel, one on the northern, the other on the southern side. The extreme south-western point of English soil, the Land's End, is formed by an abrupt mass of granite rock in which the long projecting peninsula of the south terminates. We must now turn from this survey of the coast, and of the political and commercial results of its conform- ation, to a survey of the land itself, and of its inner structure. The most prominent features of this struc- ture are its mountain-groups, and it is to a study of these that we may proceed in the next chapter. Headlands. East Coast. Sotith Coast. West Coast. Ft. Ft. Ft. Flamborough Head 450. Dunge Ness .... 92 Hartland Point . . . 350 Hunstanton Point . 60 Beachy Head . . . 04 S. Gowan's Head . 166 North Foreland . . 184 S. Alban's Head . . 440 S. David's Head . . 100 South Foreland . . 370 Portland Bill .... 30 Braich-y-Pwll . . . <^A Dover Cliffs .... 469 Start Point 204 Holyhead 719 The Lizard 224 Great Orme's Head 678 Land's End .... 60 S. Bee's Head . . . 466 Islands. East Coast. Sottth Coast. West Coast. Holy Lsland. The Fame Islands. Sheppey Island. Isle of Wi£?ht. Sc.lly Islands. Isle of Anglesea. Isle of Man. III.] COAST OF ENGLAND AND WALES. 39 Bays and Estuaries. East Coast. South Coast. IVest Coast. The Tees. Portsmouth Harbour. Bideford Bay. The H umber. Southampton Water. Plymouth Sound. Bristol Channel. The Wash. Sjvansea Bay. Tlie Thames. Mount's Bay. Caermarthen Bay. Milford Haven. • S. Bride's Bay. Cardigan Bay. Estuary of the Dec. Estuary of the Mersey. Morecambe Bay. Solway Firth. CHAPTER IV. MOUNTAIN GROUPS. Importance of Mountains. — As we looked out from the water-parting over western England, we saw the country broken up into three great masses of moun- tains. We must now examine these three districts more in detail. The mountains of any country are among its most important features. By them the river-system of the land is in great measure determined ; they influence the climate for good or evil to the tillage of the soil j by the character and mode of upheaval of their rocks it is decided whether mines of precious metals are to be brought to the surface or buried unknown in the earth ; and on their position in the country, and the degree of their steepness and wildness, depends the question whether inland trade and commerce can be easy and profitable, or whether it will be checked by overpowering difficulties of communication. In England the mountain groups are so disposed as to give many advantages to the country. They send CHAP. IV.] MOUNTAIN GROUPS. 41 down to the plains abundant rivers, they shield the island from excessive rain, they contain great stores of coal and mineral treasure, while they allow a free communication between nearly every part of the island, so that wealth and civilization may be easily diffused. The mountains of England lie in four distinct groups — (i) the Pennine Range^ (2) the Cumbrian Hills , (3) the Welsh Mountains^ and (4) the Hii^hlands of Devon and Cornwall. I. The Pennine Range (see p. 59) is a vast suc- cession of moorlands and masses of hills stretching southward from the Cheviot Hills in a long unbroken line to the heart of England, and forming a kind of backbone to the country. Throughout its whole course it lies nearer to the Irish Sea than to the North Sea, falling rapidly down to the western coast, but sinking on the east to the broad plain of York. Its general height is between 1,000 and 2,000 feet — but it rises to nearly 3,000 feet in Cross Fell in the north, where the mountain-ridge is wild and narrow. Further south it broadens, and from its great table-lands throws up a group of mountains, Mickle Felly Whemsidey Ingle- boroughy and many others on the eastern side, while on the west offshoots arc sent out towards the Irish Sea, so that the moors here reach forty miles in breadth. Again narrowing a little to the Peak^ a region of moor- lands and rounded hills, the range dies down gradually to the central plain of England, after having reached a length of two hundred miles. A line of mountain heights so wild and steep and of so great a length 42 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. forms almost a wall of separation between the east and west of northern England, shutting them out to a great extent from direct communication with each other, and driving all traffic between England and Scotland along two routes w^hich alone remain open to it, the lowlands of the coast on the west, and the plain of York on the east. The scenery of the moors re- mains throughout wild and bleak; heather and thin grass alone cover the uplands, and the rough hills are in many places pierced by deep caverns formed in their rocks of mountaui limestone, into which the hill- torrents plunge to travel for a time under ground. In the straitened river valleys alone can shelter be found for some litde agriculture, and a few small villages. All besides is silent and deserted. There is one point, however, towards the south, em part of the range where the character of the moorland slopes is wholly changed. Here the up- heaval of the lower rocks has rent asunder a vast coalfield which once stretched across this part of; England, and rich beds of coal and iron lie extended on the slopes of the range to east and west, where they have become the centre of the greatest mining and manufacturing industries of England. The working of iron and steel is carried on alike on both sides of the range, but besides these there are special industries which belong respectively to the eastern and western slopes. The eastern or Yorkshire moors form the great seat of the woollen trade, where the whole of the English manufacture of cloth and worsted is centred. On the western or Lancashire moors is the IV.] MOUNTAIN GROUPS. 43 cotton manufacture^ whence England draws its entire supply for internal and foreign trade. These indus- tries have gathered round them, in what were once moorland solitudes, the densest population in all England, and have crowded the hill-sides with towns half hidden under the cloud of smoke sent up from the tall chimneys of innumerable factories, blast-furnaces, and coal-pits. II. The Cumbrian Group lies on the western side of the Pennine Chain, to which it is bound by a spur of high moorlands thrown across not far from Whern- side. This connecting belt of moors dips midway between the two mountain masses to form the pass of Shap Fellf over which a road climbs by which all trade passes between the western parts of England and Scotland. To the north of Shap Fell the Cumbrian Mountains are severed from the Pennines by the broad valley of the river Eden ; to the south of it by the narrow glen formed by the river Lune. The two bays into which these rivers open, Solway Firth and More- camhe Bay, enclose the Cumbrian group to north and south. Within these boundaries rises a small, compact, circular mass of mountains, very steep on their northern and western faces, but sinking gradually to Morecambe Bay on the south in long and gentle slopes. The centre of the group is marked by one of its greatest mountains, Uelveilyn^ 3,000 feet high; the northern borders by Skiddaw; the greatest western heights by Scafell, the loftiest mountain in England, 3,i02 feet high, and by Bowfell lying near it To tlie 44 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. south is Collision Old Ma?i, whence the hills gradually fall to the sea in the peninsula of Furness, The great feature which distinguishes this district from the rest of England is the number of its lakes^ which are the more remarkable as being the only large Cu.MBKiAN Hills. sheets of water throughout the whole country, and so give to this region the name of the Lake Districts These lakes lie in a somewhat regular order, occupying IV.] MOUNTAIN GROUPS. 4$ long narrow valleys, which are ranged round the centre of the group, Helvellyn, and radiate from it outwards in all directions like the spokes of a wheel. The largest, Windermere, points south ; Hawes Water and Ulles- water, north-east; Thirhnere, north; Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite Water, north-west ; Buttermeie and Crummock Water, also north-west; Ennerdale Water, west ; Wastwater, south-west ; and Conistoti Water nearly south. In the midst of them, a little to the west of Helvellyn, lies the high central valley of Borrowdale, shut in on every side by closely encircling hills, and very famous for the beauty of its scenery. The steep sides of the mountains as they descend to the sea are cut by many other valleys, deep, narrow, and wild, worn by the mountain torrents flowing from the upper lakes. But the only river of any size is the Derwent, which, by means of its tributaries, drains all the lakes of the north-west, itself taking its rise in Derwentwater, close to Borrowdale. The population of this district is scanty : its indus- tries are limited to sheep-farming, and the working of one or two lead mines, and of a coal-bed on the sea- shore. But the character of the rocks, soil, and climate, which have limited its means of wealth, have at* the same time given to it a beauty in which it surpasses all other parts of England. III. The mountains of the Welsh Group form a broad peninsula bounded on the north by the Irish Sea, and on the south by the Bristol Channel. This peninsula extends westward to St George's Channel, where it sends out in a south-westerly direction 46 GEOGRAniY [chap. two spurs of mountainous rock, of which the upper one is narrow and abrupt, the lower one broader and longer, and which include between them Cardigan Bay. The low island of Anglesea, lying close to the land, has the look of a third projection point- ing to the north-west. The narrow north-eastern part Wklsh Hills. of this mountain group is bounded on the east by the river Dee and the wide plain stretching beyond it to the Pennine chain ; the broader south-eastern portion is cut off from the plain of Central England by the narrow valley of the river Severn. These two valleys form a continuation to the southward of that long iv.T MOylSTTAIN GROUPS. 47 belt of low ground which extends from the head of the Solway Firth along the western side of the Pen- nine Chain, save where it is broken by the pass of Shap-Fell, and which marks the eastern boundary of the ancient rocks known as Cambrian and Silurian, the first-formed land of Southern Britain (see p. 21). The whole of the mountainous district which lies to the west of these rivers formerly belonged to the principality of Wales ; and though part of it has now been taken into England, the greater part still retains the older name. For the sake of clear- ness, the whole group must first be considered under the general name of the Welsh group ; afterwards it will be possible to divide between the part now included in England, and that which is still known as Wales. The structure of these mountains can be best under- stood by observing the direction of their chief ranges. Of these there are four, besides a tract of very broken country which lies to the south-west. Three of the mountain ranges run nearly in the same direction, from north-east to south-west — (i) the Snowdon Rar^e; (2) the Benvyn Mountains ; (3) the PUnlimmon Range; (4) the fourth and most southerly range, the Black Mountains and Brecknock Beacon^ lie due east and west ; (5) the broken country made up of Hereford Plain with its surrounding circle of irregular heights forms the easternmost part of the mountain group. The mountain districts of Wales are all alike in character, consisting as they do of extensive tracts 4S GEOGRAPHY. [chap. of wild moorland broken by masses of hills, which rise in the north-west in Snowdon to 3570 feet, a greater height than any other Welsh summit, and form a scenery of extreme grandeur and boldness. The moors are studded with small tarns instead of lakes ; and give rise to a number of rivers that dash down- wards to the plains in steep waterfalls and rapid torrents, the chief of these being the Severn and the Wye, which take their rise near the centre of the group. The whole mountainous district is less remark- able, however, for the height of its hills than for the variety of its wild and picturesque scenery, the great beauty of its glens and mountain gorges, and the abundance of its tarns and running waters. But its rough moorlands and slaty hills are barren and thinly-peopled, save by the borders of the Bristol Channel, where the southern slopes of the Brecknock Beacons and Black Mountains contain a bed of coal and iron that stretches down to the sea-coast, and here, as on the Pennine Moors, a sudden change takes place, and crowded population and ceaseless activity take the place of silence and desolation. The fifth division, the broken plain of Hereford, which has been taken from Wales to add to England, is the only naturally fertile district lying to the west of the Severn. It is broken by gently-sloping hills, and surrounded on all sides by mountainous country. On the south lie the Black Mountains, with their outlying ridges ; on the west the high moorland country which stretches along the eastern slopes of PhnUmmon ; on the north long lines of hills IV.] MOUNTAIN GROUPS. 49 radiating northwards, — Stiper Stones^ Long Mynd, Wenlock Edge and the Clee Hills ; and on the east a ridge of steep heights which border the valley of the Severn, the chief of these being the Malvern Hills and Dean Forest. The wild and rugged character qf the Welsh mountains is only preserved in the western boundaries of this district, the eastern hills being much lower and more gentle, while the broad plain, which forms in fact the fruitful basin of the river Wye^ \% rich with orchards and highly-cultivated ground. LjxgiiHh. Channel J/,War(Ut. Hills or Dsvon and Cornwalu IV. The peninsula of Devon and Cornwall, which reaches out to the Atlantic between the Bristol and the English Channels, is cut off from the uplands of southern England by the valley of the river Parret and by the Vale of Taunton — valleys which in fact form a continuation to the south of the great depression of the Severn valley, and like it divide the ancient 50 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. granites, schists, and slates of the western mountains from the newer rocks of the east. (See p. 21.) The peninsula which lies to westward of these valleys differs in character from the mountain groups to northward of it, but it is closely allied to the peninsula of Brittany in France, which forms the opposite shore of the Channel that has severed these two districts one from another. On both sides of the sea there is the same geological structure, the same rugged and indented coast, the same climate, the same race of mhabitants ; the very headlands in which the penin- sulas terminate bear the same name of Land's End, or Fin-des-terres. The Devonian Heights rise on the southern shores of the British Channel in the lofty tableland of Exmoor and the Quantock Hills to the east of it. Exmoor itself forms a barren and treeless moorland where gloomy stretches of bog alternate with wide reaches of sheep-pasture, cleft by wooded ravines. The hills with which its surface is broken rise from 1,200 feet to a height of 1,700 feet in Diinkerry Beacon. On its northern side the tableland falls to the sea in steep cliffs, while on the southern side the ground sinks gradually towards the wide bay which lies between Start Point and Portland Bill, to which the rivers of the moorlands, such as the Exe, are thrown down. ■ To westward of the broad plain which forms the lower valley of the Exe, and inclosed between that river and the Tamar, rises Dartmoor, a second tract of moorland between 1,000 and 2,000 feet high, more extensive than the first, and yet more rugged and barren IV.] MOUNTAIN GROUPS. 51 in scenery, without grass or trees, and like Exmoor, covered by wide stretches of bog. It rises to its greatest height of 2,040 feet on its western side in the summit of Ves Tor, whence it slopes by degrees to the English Channel, forming a projecting mass thrust out against the waves, which terminates in Start Point, and is bounded to east and west by deep harbours, the mouth of the Exe, and Plymouth Sound. This mass of heights is the centre where a number of small rivers take their rise, and flow in all directions, such as the P/ym, the Z>ar^, the Teign, and the Tawe — all streams of little importance. It is a richer district than Exmoor, for its rocks of slate and granite contain mines of tin, copper, lead, and iron ; and quarries of granite, marble, and limestone, besides beds of porcelain clay. To westward of the Tamar lie the Cornish High-- lands, a succession of granite moorlands broken by hills much lower than those of Dartmoor and Exmoor. These tablelands and hills, beginning on the shores of Bideford Bay at Hartland Point, narrow so as to form a single line of heights, with a rapid slope on either side to the sea, and run to the south and south- west as far as the high granite headland of the LatuTs End and the volcanic rocks of Lizard Point, while the bare cliffs of the Scilly Islands beyond show how fiir the peninsula once stretched. The chief moun- tains of Cornwall are Broum Willy, 1,368 feet high, and close to it Rough Tor rising out of a tablehuid of dreary, treeless waste, covered with bog. Beneath the gloomy and barren surface of Cornwall E a 52 GEOGRAPPIY. [chap. valuable minerals lie buried. Its rocks contain some of the very few tin-mines in the world, which, as far as history takes us back, have given it a most important foreign trade. Copper is also more abun- dant in its rocks than anywhere else in Great Britain, and besides these it possesses lead-mines and great granite quarries. Here alone in the peninsula do we find the country tolerably well peopled, for a large mining population has been gathered to its south-western end, where the mineral wealth is most abundant. Comparison of these Mountain Groups. — The four mountain groups of the west coast have certain points of likeness, {a.) They are alike com- posed of those ancient Cambrian, Silurian, and Devonian rocks whose summits rose as islets in mid-ocean while the rocks of eastern England yet lay hidden in its depths, {b.) They share in the same poverty of soil, in the same excessive moisture of climate, and consequently in the same scarcity of tillage and scantiness of population. (c.) Their sources of wealth and industry are the same — sheep-grazing, stone quarrying, and the working of mines of coal and metal. But they have also their points of unlikejiess, each one differing from all the rest in {a) relative position, (p) in form and size, {c) in scenery, and {d) in the quantity of their mineral wealth (see p. 21.) The Pennine chain lies apart from the rest by its inland position ; by its form of a long narrow wedge driven down the centre of the country, it divides iv.J MOUNTAIN GROUPS. 53 between two parts' of England so as to check com- munication, while on the other hand the mountains of the coast form a barrier, not between two portions of the land, but between land and sea. But as the Pennines traverse the narrowest and most remote part of England, and run in a direction from north to south, the barrier which they form does not wholly cut off any part of the island from all other parts, and their influence in retard- ing the spread of free intercourse is slight. In this they differ from the Cheviot Mountains, which run across the island from east to west, and so break it into distinct parts, which remained separate kingdoms for many hundred years. The Pennine Moors differ also from the other mountain groups in the greater extent of their coal fields, and in the variety of the manufac- tures peculiar to them, for example, wool, cotton, silk, pottery, hardware, and cutlery. The three groups which rest on the sea contrast strongly with one another in the four points mentioned. They differ (a) in relative position. The Cumbrian group lies west of the high mass of the Pennine Chain ; the hills of Devon and Cornwall west of the low chalk downs of southern England ; and the Welsh Mountains west of the broken central plain of England, (d.) Again, their forms are different ; the Cumbrian group is a small, round, compact ring of heights, projecting very little into the sea ; the Devonian group, a long, irregular, and narrow peninsula thrust out into the ocean for a great distance ; and the Welsh group, a much larger mass than the other two, very broad, reaching out into tlie sea farther than the northern group but not so 54 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. far as the southern, and sending out from its west- ern shores two projecting tongues of land, {c.) The character of the scenery varies in each group. The Cumbrian Mountains are steep and high, lying close together, and parted only by narrow valleys, with a lake lying in the centre of each valley. Devon and Cornwall, on the contrary, form a mountain plain raised high above the sea level, chiefly composed of a succession of bleak moorlands, broken here and there by hills, but having no fertile valleys, no lakes, and no steep mountain heights. The Welsh group combines in itself the character of the other two. In the north and south it has mountains like those of the Cum- brian group, but far steeper, higher, bolder, and more ex- tensive ; while in the centre and south-east there are high moors and mountain plains like those of Devon or Cornwall, but far wilder and more desolate. Owing to its greater size, however, it differs in a very marked way from the other groups in the extent and importance of its river-system. (d.) There is a difference, too, in the mineral wealth of the three districts. The Cumbrian Hills are poor in minerals, possessing only a bed of coal and a few lead-mines ; Cornwall has its rare metals of tin and copper ; while Wales contains, besides lead and copper, one of the greatest coal and iron fields in Britain. Mountains. T/ie Pennine Range. Cross Fell 2,892 feet. Mickle Fell 2,591 „ iv.l MOUNTAIN GROUPS. 55 Wheraside 2,414 feet. Ingleborougli 2,373 „ Pen-y-gent 2,273 » Pendle Hill 1,831 „ The Peak, Kinderscaut . . . 1,981 „ The Peak, Lord's Seat . . . 1,816 „ Axe Edge Hill 1,810 „ Weaver Hill ij205 ,, The Cumbrian Group. Scafell 3,162 feet. Helvellyn 3,118 „ Skiddaw 3>o54 » Fairfield 2,863 „ Great Gavel 2,949 „ Bow Fell 2,960 „ Pillar 2,932 „ Saddle Back 2,847 „ Coniston Old Man .... 2,577 „ The Welsh Group Snowdon . . . Carnedd Llewellyn Aran Mowddwy . Cadcr Idris . . . Moel Shiabod . . Brecknock Beacon Cradle (Brecknock) Plinlimmon . . . Radnor Forest . . Stipcr Stones (hi^'hest poir.t) Long Mynd 3,570 3,482 2,972 2,929 2,865 2,910 2,630 2,469 2,166 1,759 1,674 feet. 56 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. iv. Caradoc Hills 1,200 feet. Wenlock Edge „ Clee Hills 1,805 „ The Devojtian Group. Exmoor, Dunkerry Beacon . . 1,707 feet Dartmoor, Yes Tor .... 2,040 „ Cornish Highlands, Brown Willy 1,368 ,, „ „ Rough Tor 1,296 „ CHAPTER V. UPLAND RANGES. Scenery of Eastern England. — If we now look from the water-parting over eastern England, a very different scene lies before us from that presented by the mountainous districts of the west. Instead of rugged mountains and moorlands covered with heath, bog, or scanty grass, we see lines of low hills, undulating downs, and broad river plains with their corn-fields, grass-lands, and orchards of fruit. Instead of wide reaches of deserted moors, broken here and there by the busy life of the coal-fields with their crowded manufacturing cities, we find a country with the popu- lation spread evenly over its surface in innumerable villages and quiet country towns lying by the banks of rivers. The activity, wealth, and unsightliness of the mining districts are exchanged for the stillness of agricultural life. This contrast is brought about by the different character of the ground. The soft rocks of' the east are without the mineral wealth, as they are without the torn and distorted character of the western mountains. The greatest elevations which we see are 58 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. v. simply undulations of the ground, formed chiefly by long lines of uplands dipping and rising again a they traverse the great plains. In very few parts of eastern England do the hills rise higher than from 500 to 900 feet, that is, to half the height of the chief mountains of Devon and Cornwall, or about a quarter the height of the chief Cumbrian Mountains ; and their gentle slopes contrast strongly with the bold outlines of the volcanic rocks and masses of hard slate which are found in the west. Uplands. — Before examining the uplands of eastern England we must be very careful to avoid all confusion between upland and mountain. An upland is a tract of country often very extensive, raised sometimes many hundred feet, sometimes only 200 feet, above the level of the sea. Its surface may be quite smooth, or varied by undulating ground — it may be extremely fertile, or comparatively bleak and barren, accord- ing to the character of the soil. Again, it is possible for the upland to be low and even, and the plain beside it very much broken by hills and slightly raised, thus making the distinction between them to be well-nigh lost in parts ; while in other places the plain may be perfectly flat with the high ground rising sharply from it like a wall so as to form a steep escarpment. Thus the uplands which cut through the broken plains of central and eastern England are sufficient to add variety and beauty to the scenery, without giving those strongly-marked features to the country which distinguish the west. The soft clays and chalk which compose them are ENGLIND. UPLANDS AND PLAINS. n^mborou^h 1' nxttmu CHAIN I. CroM Pen. t. WhcnMid*. CBNTRAL FLAIM. 1. Cannock ChAnc. a. Dudley Hilht. OOLITtC RANGE, t. Lrne Regit. y Bdff* HUli. 4. Northampton ITplnndt. 1:1 9. Yoik Moeni CHALK RANCH. I. DorMt Ilewblfa a. Salitbury Ftila. 3. MarlbortHMrh Dowm. 4. Hampablre Downs. ;. White Hone HUl. ft. Ihley Down. 7. Chiiiera HUto. kfiMt AoKiiea UpbuMk. 6o GEOGRAPHY. [chap. worn away by time and weather into gently rounded lines of hills, and no part of them is wholly unfit for either agriculture or pasture. The Upland Ranges. — Though the features of upland and plain are sometimes so blended together in eastern England as to make the line of separation between them very slight, yet the ranges which form the skeleton of the country on this side of the water- parting can be distinctly traced. As the west of England has its four mountain masses, so the east has its four ranges of uplands, as the framework on which it is built up. Of these we may call the first the Oolitic Range ; while the three others, that is to say, the Chilterns and East Anglian range, the North Dow7is, and the South Downs, compose the ranges of the Chalk. These ranges, however, are disposed in an order wholly different from that of the west. Begin- ning on the shores of the English Channel, where they are closely linked together, they stretch out to the north-east and east, making the form of a great misshapen hand — a hand having the palm of a dwarf, and the fingers of a giant. The northernmost range is the longest, and contains the steepest heights ; the other ranges decrease gradually in length and in height to the South Downs, which is the least of all in size, so that the whole surface of the land forms a gradual slope from the oolitic uplands to the sea-shore. The oolitic range and the first of the chalk ranges are alike in their general direction ; both of them traverse ; England from sea to sea, and both form on their \ western sides a tolerably steep escarpment, while V J UPLAND RANGES. 6i tlieir eastern slopes descend very gently and gradually to the plains below. The two more southern branches of the chalk uplands, the North and South Downs, differ from them in being much narrower and shorter lines of hilly country, more uniform on both their faces. I. The Oolitic Range of uplands takes its name from the character of the limestones of which it is in great part composed, whose stones are made up of a multitude of little round egg-like particles, oon being the Greek word for an egg. These uplands form a long chain of heights travers- ing England from the cliffs which line the shores of the English Channel on either side of Lyme Regis in the south, to the mouth of the Tees on the north-eastern coast. The whole range taken by itself is in form something like a huge sickle, having its handle resting on the English Channel, and the flat- tened end of its blade on the German Ocean. Its great length is made up of a number of different parts. The southern extremity, which forms the handle of the sickle, begins in the rocks by Lyme Regis. Thence an ir- regular line of low broken heights extends northwards towards the estuary of the Severn, where they suddenly change in character as they emerge into the Cotswold Jfills. These hills form a range of high tablelands with a very steep escarpment looking out over the Severn valley, and a gradual slope on their eastern side ; their soil will grow little but a thin grass, so that their whole industry consists of sheep grazing. The long line of the Cotswolds as it trends round to the north-east forms the beginning of the blade of the 62 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. sickle, and sinking lower and lower, soon passes into the smaller and more broken Edge Hills. From the Edge Hills the Northampton Heights stretch in a north- easterly direction, and present a-low broad tableland, scarcely raised above the plain to west of it. Their north-eastern portion is known by the name of Rockingham Forest, from the extremity of which a narrow belt of the same gently undulating country, called the Lincoln Uplands, runs northwards to the Humber, where it unites with a second very short line of uplands formed of chalk, the Lincoln Wolds. To the north of the Humber both these ranges are prolonged together in a neck of high land called the York Wolds, composed for the most part of chalk. They are for some distance nar- rowed to right and left by the Plain of York and the Holderness marsh ; but suddenly the heights expand on either side — eastward to the sea-shore at Flamboroiigh Head, the beginning of a long wall of sea- cliffs reaching to the Tees, and westward in the semi-circular line of the Hamhledon Hills. The broad northern end of the whole range is formed by the York Moors, a tract of wild moorland ■which runs east and west, and unites the Hambledon Hills with the sea- cliffs of the eastern coast. These moors are the highest and wildest part of the whole range, and therefore of the whole of eastern England. They are bleak and solitary, with their steep and barren heights, their scattered sheep-farms, their lonely tracts of gorse, and their clusters of stunted trees lying in sheltered hollows. Their southern side is v.] UPLAND RANGES. 63 deeply cut by narrow river valleys which run down to the low ground of the Vale of Pickering, shut in between the Moors and the Wolds : while their northern face towards the Tees forms the steep line of the Cleveland Hills ^ famous for producing the best iron in England, and for being at present the only mining and manu- facturing district of the English uplands. Throughout the whole extent of the range, made up as it is of all these parts, the western face is steeper than the eastern, and forms a great escarpment which overlooks the plains of central England and of York. This escarpment, like the uplands which it bounds, rises to its greatest height in its two opposite extremities, the York Moors, and the Cotswold Hills, while the lower central part of the range dips to the plain, and like it is covered with corn and wheat and richer pasture-lands. But the western escarpment of the uplands is throughout its whole length clearly defined by the river valleys which run along its base. The valley of the Ouse bounds the Hambledon Hills and York Wolds ; the valley of the Trent lies below the Lincoln heights ; the Avon passes under the North- ampton uplands and Edge Hills to the Cotswolds, below which lies the Severn. The oolitic range is important as marking a very distinct natural division between two parts of Eng- land. It fonns the eastern boundary of the manu- facturing districts, which nowhere cross the limits set by it. To the west and north-west of the range, therefore, lie the whole industrial wealth and activity of England, its centres of dense population, 64 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. and its commercial cities, inhabited chiefly by in- telligent and trained artisans, classes of rising im- portance in English political and social life. To the south-east of the range, on the contrary, are the agricultural districts of England, containing but one great centre of crowded population in the valley of the Thames. II. The Chalk Ranges. — If we now look at Eng- land from this oolitic range eastward we shall see that what remains of it is an irregular triangle bounded by the English Channel, the North Sea, and a line drawn from the Wash to the Channel about Lyme. All this vast triangle is occupied by the chalk uplands, and the river plains and valleys which part their branches from one another. (i.) The northernmost of these chalk ranges ap- proaches very nearly to the oolitic in position, in form, and in direction, save that its course is shorter. It forms a tableland with a steep flat-topped escarpment facing west, and with a gradual slope to the south-east and east, furrowed by small river valleys ; and it runs in a direction almost parallel to the oolitic uplands from the English Channel to the North Sea. Begin- ning on the shores of the Channel east of Lyme in the Dorset Heights, it so closely adjoins the oolitic range as to form with it for some distance almost one tract of uplands. The Dorset Heights as they pass northwards widen to Salisbury Plain, a barren and woodless tract of undulating country covered with a short thin grass and difficult of cultivation save in the valleys of the streams crossing it. North of v.] UPLAND RANGES. 65 Salisbury Plain lie the Marlborough Downs^ whence the range bends to the eastward, and forms the escarpment of the White Horse Hill and Ilsley Downs. It is now sharply broken across by a cleft through which the river Thames passes ; and on the further side of this gap it takes the name of the Chiltem Hills^ a high range of chalk downs running to the north-east. From the Chilterns to Hunstanton Cliff on the shores of the Wash, the uplands are known as the East Anglian Heights. Here the chalk range widens until it fills nearly the whole of that broad tract of land which pro- jects eastward into the North Sea ; and as its western side becomes less steep and clearly marked, and at the same time its eastern slopes grow more and more gradual in their decline, it forms a wide expanse of gently-swelling upland, entirely given up to pasture and agriculture. (2.) The two remaining ranges of high ground in southern England are formed of the same chalk rocks as the Chilterns and the East Anglian Heights — but they differ from that range in direction, in size, and in form. As the two northernmost ranges, the Oolitic and the Chalk, are bound together at their first beginning in the south, so the two southernmost ranges, the North and South Downs, are in like manner linked together for a time. From the eastern side of Salisbury Plain a broad tract of chalk uplands, known as the Hamp- shire Downs^ extends in an easterly direction, and presently breaks into two short branches, which form 66 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. the two last fingers of the hand we have imagined. These two branches, the North and South Downs, have for their starting point the country about the town of Winchester, whence the northern branch, the No7'th Downs^ runs due east to the sea in a narrow ridge of hills, which broadens at its eastern ex- tremity till it ends in the North and South Forelands and the cliffs of Dover and Folkestone. (3.) The range of the South Doivns stretches from the same point, and has a south-easterly direction to Beachy Head on the English Channel. Like the North Downs it runs in low flat-topped ridges never mounting to 900 feet in height, or in lines of very gentle curves rising one behind the other with a monotony peculiar to chalk scenery. Uplands. Oolitic Range. Cotswold Hills, Cleave Hills . 1,093 feet. Edge Hills 826 „ Northampton uplands, highest point 735 „ York Wolds, Wilton Beacon . 785 „ York Moors, Botton Head . . 1,489 „ Chalk Ratifies. (i.) Dorset Heights, Pillesden Pen . 910 feet. Salisbury Plain, highest point . 754 ,, Marlborough Downs, Milk Hill 967 „ v.] UPLAND RANGES. Ilsley Downs 800 feet. Chiltern Hills .... 900 to 300 „ East Anglian Heights . . 300 to 60 „ (2.) Hampshire Downs — Inkpen Beacon 972 Highclere Beacon .... 863 „ North Downs .... 863 to 300 ',' (3.) South Downs .... 880 to 100 « 67 CHAPTER VI. THE PLAINS. The Plains. — '^y plains wo: mean the low country lying between the mountains or uplands which we . have already surveyed. As we have seen, the plains are often but little lower than the uplands, and are varied in character, being sometimes broken by low hilis and undulating ground, while at other times they are perfectly level. In most cases they form the valleys of rivers thrown down from the higher ground by which the plains are shut in, and are thus the most fruitful districts in England. (See p. 59). I. The most extensive plain in England is that which lies to the west and north-west of the Oolitic Range, parting these uplands for their northern half from the Pennine Chain, and for their southern half from the group of the Welsh mountains. The two ends of this great plain lie on opposite coasts of England, one opening on the North Sea to the north of the York Moors, the other on the Irish Sea between the Welsh and Cumbrian mountains ; while its central part is sharply curved round so as to inclose the south- CH. VI.] THE PLAINS. 69 em extremity of the Pennine Chain in the Peak. Thus the whole plain has the form of the letter J. This plain is divided by its river valleys into three separate parts. {a.) One portion runs due north and south, parting the Pennine Moors on its western side from the York Moors and Wolds on the east. This portion is called the Plain of York, or the Valley of the River Ouse, and consists of a broad and perfectly level tract of country, well watered by a great number of fine rivers which flow across it in every part from the neighbouring hills and moors, and make it through- out its whole length one of the most fertile agricul- tural districts in England. {b.) The character of the country greatly changes at the base of the Pennine Chain, where the plain sweeps westward round the Peak of Derbyshire. Here it widens considerably to form the great Central Plain of England, or the Valley of the Trent, which stretches between the basin of the Severn on the west, Rockingham Poorest on the east, and the Pennine range and the Cotswolds on the north and south. This broad tract of low country is broken by undulating ground, by low uplands such as that of Cannock Chase to the north-west, and even by steep hills thrown up abruptly from the level country, as the Dudley Hills near the Welsh border. It differs from the York Plain not only in its scenery but in its industries. While in some parts the country is purely agricultural, in others the industry wholly depends on mineral wealth and manu- factures. Especially round the upthrow of the Dudley 70 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. Hills, beds of coal and iron-mines have been dis- covered, which have become the centre of one of the busiest manufacturing districts of England and have converted the country into a vast series of furnaces, manufactories, coal-pits, iron-works, and potteries, whose smoke almost destroys vegetation, and has given to this region the name of the Black Country. (c.) Immediately to the north-west of the manufac- turing district lies that portion of the great plain which opens on the Irish Sea, the greater part of which is known as the Plain of Cheshire. It extends for some distance northwards along the western slopes of the South Pennine Moors, and forms a deep and wide basin parting them from the Welsh mountains. The ground is for the most part perfectly level, only varied by one line of low hills, and wholly given up to pasture for cattle, and great dairy farms. In the centre of the plain, however, along the valley of the Weaver, there is a considerable sinking of the ground, marked by brine- springs and deep mines of rock salt, where the chief salt manufacture of England is carried on. The whole of this immense plain, stretching as it does from the North Sea to the Irish Sea, is thus as varied in character as the upland range which bounds its eastern side. While the line of uplands is high at either end and lower in the centre, the extremities of the plain are level and its central part raised. As this higher ground adjoins the lowest part of the upland range, that is, the low heights of the North- ampton uplands, it follows that the difference in VI.] THE PLAINS. 71 elevation between the two is not very clearly marked ; and thus the whole central district of England, from the Welsh border to the shores of the Wash, presents the same appearance of very varied though quiet, undulating country, unmarked by violent features of any kind, affording throughout its greater part ex- cellent soil for tillage and pasture, well-watered by rivers, and rich in woodland. II. The second valley or plain lies between the ranges of the Oolitic and Chalk Uplands. It forms a long belt of low tumbled country running in a north- easterly direction, very narrow for the greater part, but increasing to considerable width as it approaches the shores of the Wash. In the south-east the Upper Valley of the Thames parts the Marlborough Downs from the Cotswolds and the Edge Hills, and includes to westward the VaU of White Horse^ and to eastward the wider and more broken VaU of Ayles- bury^ running below the steep ridge of the Chiltern Hills. This last vale leads into the Valley of the Ouse, which separates the East Anglian uplands from the low undulations of Rockingham Forest. Near the shores of the Wash this tract of low country becomes still broader; it opens in fact into a wide stretch of level, monotonous marsh, traversed by a multitude of sluggish streams. This district of the Fens, sometimes known as Holland or the hollow land, which in former times was merely a swampy wilderness full of unhealthy vapours, has been drained at immense cost of money and labour, and been made very fertile and moderately healthy, but it 72 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. retains its dull monotony of scenery, long stagnant water-courses winding through flat fields, and lines of straight canals bordered by endless rows of willows. III. A third plain parts the two northernmost ranges of chalk uplands, and constitutes one of the largest and most fertile valleys in England, and the most important in its history. It is formed by the lower Basin of the River Thames, the first and greatest highway of communication between England and the Continent. The valley consists of a sunken clay soil, diversified here and there by low rising grounds, through the midst of which the river runs with innumerable windings, gathering to itself on its way the many streams which fall down the gentle slopes of the hills to north and south of it. At first narrow where it is shut in between the Marlborough Downs and the Hampshire Downs, the valley widens greatly at its eastern opening, becoming more broken and undulating where it parts the Chiltern Hills and the East Anglian uplands from the North Downs. The low heights of Epping and Haijiault Forests^ which still retain re- mains of the ancient woods that once clothed them, occupy the country to the north of the Thames estuary, till they die down into the flat, swampy marshes which lie along the sea-shore. The whole of this low-lying plain is exceedingly fertile and highly cultivated, but its great importance lies in the broad estuary of the Thames as it widens out to the German Ocean, and there opens the way by which vessels pass into the port of London, the capital of England. IV. A fourth plain is that inclosed between the VI.] THE PLAINS. 73 Steep escarpments of the North and South Downs, and called the Weald. This is wholly different from the valley of the Thames. In form indeed it is not very unlike it, having also a wide opening on the sea to the east, and narrowing greatly to its opposite extremity. Its soil also consists for the most part of heavy clay. But along its centre lies, not a low river valley, but a ridge of sandy heights, called the Forest Ridge or the Wealden Heights^ which forms the water-parting of the district. The rivers of the Weald thus flow north and south from its central heights, cutting right through the soft chalk ranges on either side, instead of flowing like those of the Thames basin from the hills on its borders to the river valley in its centre. In appearance and fertility the Weald is also very different from the Thames valley ; on all sides we see lines of low rises which were once a mass of tangled forest, and are still covered in great part by trees, and but partially brought under cultivation. It contains no large towns, and its vil- lages are supported by agriculture and the employment given by the extensive woodland. The whole of this Wealden district and the neighbouring chalk downs are remarkable for their exact resemblance in geolo- gical structure to the district of Boulogne on the opposite French coast, from which they have been broken off by the narrow strait of Dover. The likeness between the two shores of the channel is thus marked as clearly in the later rocks of the east as in the old formations of the west. V. The smallest of all the English plains is the Plain 74 GEOGRAPHY. [CH. vi. of Southampton, which lies on the southern coast. It is a low basin of clay surrounded on three sides by chalk downs — on the east by the South Downs, on the north by the Hampshire Downs, and on the west by the Downs of Dorset. Even on the southern side chalk heights can be traced in the long cliff-line of Purbeck, running out sharply to the eastward, and continued across the southern half of the Isle of Wight. In the centre of this low plain is the New Forest, a hunting-ground of the kings of England 800 years ago, and still a wide tract of woodland. This valley differs from the Weald in its level and monotonous character, and also in containing the two great sea-ports of the southern coast, Soicthampton and Portsmouth ; while at the same time it differs from the basin of the Thames in being very much less fertile, and in having no large river to form a high- way from its harbours to the heart of the country. We thus see how great a part of England consists of low plains, all of which are crossed by innumerable roads, by canals measuring together 2,000 miles in length, and by railroads, which carry the produce of the country easily and rapidly to the great towns and the trading-ports. Their most important feature, however, is the system of rivers by which they are traversed, and which we must now pass on to survey. CHAPTER VI r. RIVER SYSTEM. Importance of Rivers. — As in tracing the courses of the hill masses and uplands we are led to examine the plains which lie between them, so in studying these plains, we are drawn to trace the courses of the rivers which run through their midst. This study is also forced on us by the fact that the well-being of any country depends in the first instance on its river system. There are vast tracts of lands in various parts of the world wholly forsaken and deso- late because they have no rivers : all the great cities of ancient times, and by far the greater number of modem towns have sprung up on the banks of some great stream : the chief centres of population and wealth have always been found in river valleys. The reasons of this are simple. Agriatlture is only possible where the land is drained and watered by rivers ; a supply of running water is of the first im- portance in vtanufaduring districts ; the inUmal com- merce of a country, which is so much more important to its wealth than the external, is in its first beginnings 76 GEOGRAPPIY. [chap. to a very great extent dependent on water- communi- cation between town and town : and foreign trade is developed by means of those great rivers whose channels open a highway between nation and nation, and whose estuaries give harbourage for ships. The English Rivers. — England is remarkable for the perfection of its river-system. Other countries have higher mountains, broader plains, a richer soil, and a happier climate, but, owing to the amount of its rainfall and the undulating character of its ground, no country is more completely furnished with a net- work of streams, great and small, spread over its entire surface. The greater rivers form harbours and waterways leading to the very heart of the kingdom; the lesser streams feed canals by which goods can be easily carried from place to place; all alike gather together and convey across the plains the waters needed for the fruits of the field, or for the supply of towns. The Two Water-partings. — This great river system is formed into a very beautiful and perfect or- der, an order easy to understand when we have once clearly grasped the lie of the mountains and uplands by which the waters are thrown down to the plains and there pent in till they find an outlet to the ocean. The first great natural division of the river groups is made by the hills and rising grounds which lie between the sources of rivers flowing to different seas, and so form the water-parting. In England there are two distinct lines of water-parting. The main line has been described in Chapter II : it passes in a VII.] RIVER SYSTEM. 77 sinuous course from the Cheviot Hills along the crest of the Pennine range, across the rising grounds of central ENGLAND. RIVER SYSTEMS. S^t^'^emt'MtmU' England, where it turns eastward to the Northampton uplands, and then curves back again to end on the 78 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. Cotswolds (p. 2i). This water-parting divides between the rivers which flow to the Irish and the North Seas. A second water-parting runs from east to west along the uplands of southern England, forming with the first the figure of an inverted JL- Its course is very irregu- lar, passing along the Wealden Heights, the Hampshire Downs, Sahsbury Plain, Exmoor, Dartmoor, and the Cornish Highlands. The streams thrown down from it flow southward to the English Channel, or north- wards to the Bristol Channel and the Thames estuary. By these two lines of water-parting England is divided into three distinct river systems : (i) That of the eastern country between the main water-parting and the North Sea; (2) that of the southern slopes towards the English Channel; (3) that of the western country lying towards the Irish Sea. In this last group are included the rivers of Wales, as they pour their waters into the same sea. Contrast of River Basins. — A glance at the map will shew the differences that exist between the rivers of these three watersheds of England, (i.) As the high ground of England strikes down its western districts, it follows that the main water-parting, where the sources of the great rivers take their rise, must lie much nearer the western than the eastern coast. From this it follows that the greatest number of rivers flow eastward to the North Sea. In fact, so general is this easterly direction given to the river- courses by the structure of the ground, that the four chief streams which fall into the western sea, the Dee, Severn, Wye, and Usk, all travel for the greater VII.] RIVER SYSTEM. 79 part of their length from west to east, and are only turned westward just before entering the sea. The rivers which have a general westerly direction are thus very few in number. (2.) For the same reason the eastern rivers have a long course^ and so gather a great volume of water before reaching the sea, while the western rivers have but a short way to travel and are of little consequence. Indeed the only great rivers of the west are those which come in a winding easterly course from the Welsh Mountains, not from the English water-parting. (3.) The rivers of the east, as they wind among the up- land ranges, receive from them many tributary streams, so that their basin, or the extent of land drained by them, is very great. This is not the case in western England, where the streams fall down the mountain slopes by the shortest course to the sea, and their affluents are generally few and unimportant (p. 59). The rivers of the south have a very short course, and are all small and unimportant. The Grouping of Rivers. — In tracing the sources of the rivers along the water-parting we find that they never occur singly, but always in groups of several springs, and that these groups do not lie evenly distributed, but are scattered unequally here and there. For example,' six of these chief knots of head-waters are strewn along the Pennine Chain : two more lie in the pasture-lands and low hills of the central plain ; and three in the uplands of the oolitic range. Sometimes these knots of springs lie wholly on one side of the water-parting, and all the streams then So GEOGRAPHY. [chap. flow to the same sea; but generally the group is divided and the rivers flow in opposite directions. As there is a grouping together of the head waters of rivers, so there is also a grouping of their openings into the sea. There are certain bays and estuaries lying round the coast of England which receive the greater part of the running waters of the island, for example the three great estuaries of the Humber, the Wash, and the Thames, into which nearly all the streams of the east coast are gathered..; In considering the rivers, therefore, we shall divide! them into those groups into which they are thrown by the natural formation of the country. [x\.] The Rivers of the East. These rivers, the most important for their numbers, their length, and the size of their basins, are divided into four groups. I. The Northumbrian Rivers, or those rivers which fall into the sea to the north of the Humber, form the first group. The river which lies to the extreme north of Eng- land, the river Tweed, we may pass by for the present, as it is not properly speaking an English river. The greater part of its course, in fact, lies in Scotland ; it is only as it passes to the east of the Cheviot Hills and nears the sea that it touches English soil, and thence becomes the boundary line between Scodand and England. The three rivers which fall into the North Sea below the Tweed — the Tyne, the Wear, and the Tees, — are closely connected in their sources, in their river-valleys, and in tlieir industrial value. The vn.] RIVER SYSTEM. gi WATERSHED OF THB NORTH SEA. Springs of all three lie close together, high up in the bleak moors of tlie nortli Pennine Range, o 82 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. whence their course to the sea is too short to allow them to attain very great size. But their position gives them considerable importance. As the Tyne and the Wear reach the foot of the moorland slopes they enter at once on the great mining district of the north, where a wide bed of coal stretches along the sea-shore for a very great distance, and alone yields twice as much coal as the whole of France, and where not only the coal, but the iron, zinc, and lead found in the rocks have given rise to a large manufacturing industry. The Tyne passes across the very centre of this busy region, the Wear runs along its southern borders, and both rivers as they enter the ocean break the level coast line, and form harbours which are the only outlets by sea for this immense trading industry. There is no port on the whole continent into which so large a number of vessels enters yearly as the port of Newcastle at the mouth of the Tyne, and Sunderland on the Wear is only second to it. The history of the Tees is somewhat different. Its upper course lies indeed like that of the two last rivers among wild mountain moors, but it finally emerges on low ground at the extremity of the agricultural plain of York, where the only manufac- tures are those of sail-cloth and shipping for the northern trading ports. At its estuary, however, the Tees lies just under the great iron district of the Cleveland Hills, and it thus shares in the import- ance of the other rivers of this group in forming a sea-port for the commerce of northern England. VII.] RIVER SYSTEM. 83 II. Passing south we come to the great group of rivers which are gathered together into the Humber (p. 81). The Humber is an estuary whose channel is out through the range of uplands which parts the plain of York from the North Sea : to the north of it lie the Wolds of York, to the south the Wolds of Lincoln. As this is the only opening in the long barrier of uplands which runs along this portion of the coast, and as it leads to the very heart of the great plain shut in between these uplands and the Pennine range, it has from the mere fact of its position become the channel into which all the rivers watering this dis- trict are poured, and by which they are carried to the ocean. Here both the rivers of the plain of York, severed from the sea by the northern part of the oolitic uplands, and the rivers of the central plain of England, equally severed from the sea by the central part of the same range, find their natural outlet (see p. 59). This Humber river-group is therefore the largest in England, draining as it does such an immense extent of country, not only the York Plain but also the great plain of Central England, an area in all of 9,500 square miles. By far the greater number of its rivers have their head-waters in the moors of the Pennine range, but as they fall to the plains they are taken up by two main streams. The Ousg gathers into itself all the waters from the northern half of the plain ; the Tnnty all those from the southern. Thus the rivers which unite in the Humber are naturally divided into two distinct groups, (i) those brought to it by the (Jusc, and (2) those brought to it by the Trent 84 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. (i.) The Ouse and its tributaries water the rich plain of York, which lies between the Pennine range and the Yorkshire Moors. To trace the sources of the Ouse, we must go up into the Pennine moorlands, to a point where two streams, the Swale and the Ure, take their rise side by side and flow in deep valleys down the mountain slopes to the low land, where both turn south- ward and soon after unite to form the Ouse. As this river winds through the rich plain in a long course of 114 miles it presently receives one after another three! more streams coming from the same region whence* flowed its first two tributaries. These three rivers, the Nidd, the Wharfe, and the Aire, are all thrown down the slopes of a high range of moorland which forms the southern wall of the upper valley of the Ure, and from their wild valleys among the hills they enter the plain one beyond the other, and so fall into the Ouse at equal distances, forming by their courses three parallel curves. The first stream, the Nidd, has the shortest course; then comes the Wharfe ; while the outermost circle of the Aire is the greatest of all. Thus five rivers flow into the Ouse on its western banks, and these are all drawn from the same district in the Pennine range. On its eastern banks the river takes up only one stream, the Der- went, which is thrown down from the Yorkshire Moors. The Derwent rises among the heights close to the coast ; from these it falls down to the broad Vale of Pickering, and thence flows into the Plain of York, where after some time it joins the Ouse, and thus passes on to the Humber and to the sea, m VII.] RIVER SYSTEM. 85 One river yet remains to be added to this group. The river Don rises far from the rest in a distinct group of head-waters lying near the southern end of the Pennine Chain, and flows in a north-easterly direction to join the Humber almost at the point where the Ouse empties itself into that estuary. Its course from the moorlands, and the place of its junction with the Humber, mark it out as belonging to the group of the Ouse rivers, whose number is thus made up to seven. These rivers of the Pennine Moors have some resemblance to those of the Northumbrian group. Their wild mountain valleys are of the same character, and the two southernmost of the streams as they descend the hiil slopes also enter on a great coal field, that which lies stretched along the eastern side of the Pennine Chain from the valley of the Aire as far as the valley of the Trent or the central plain of England. The Aire, which marks roughly speaking the northern limit of this coal-field, passes across its broadest and busiest part, while the Don cuts through its centre, where it is narrower. But as this mining district is bounded eastward, not by the sea, but by a level inland plain, the rivers do not play the same im- portant part as they do in the north in forming outlets for foreign trade. The main value of the whole group of streams, as they are gathered in from east and west by the Ouse, lies partly in their supplying the running waters needed for manufacturing purposes in the coal-field, partly in their course through the plain, which they water and make fertile in every part ; 86 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. while both plain and coal-field are opened to trade with foreign lands by means of the Humber. (2,) As the Ouse and its tributary streams occupy the north-eastern part of the vast plain which half encircles the Pennine Moors, so the Trent and its tributaries drain the whole of its central and south- eastern portion. The Trcjit rises on the south- western slopes of the Pennines, on the confines of the low plain of Cheshire. It first flows downwards to the southern extremity of the moorland range, sweeps right round it as it traverses the low broken country of central England, then bends northwards till its course forms a great semicircle, and empties itself at last into the Humber after a journey of 147 miles. Iti receives four rivers on its way to the sea, two on the' right hand, and two on the left, all of which meet it in that part of its course which lies exactly below the extremity of the Pennines at the Peak ; and from this' point it widens so much as to become navigable, and thus opens a waterway from the very centre of England? to the sea. Its two northern tributaries, the Dove and the Derwenf, descend from the moors of the Peak in' parallel channels not very far apart; the Derwent from its source in the heights close to the Don forming a^ narrow river valley of extreme beauty among the steep rocks of the mountain range. On the south the Trent receives the Tame coming from Cannock Chase, and the Soar, which springs in a rising ground more to the west, and empties itself into the Trent just opposite the mouth of the Derwent. By these two rivers it drains that irregular tract of country which lies between the VII.] RIVER SYSTEM. 87 hills bounding the Severn valley, and the upland range of Rockingham Forest (see p. 59). The group of rivers carried to the Humber by the Trent is thus smaller in number 'than the group gathered up by the Ouse, but this inferiority in numbers is fully atoned for by the great size and importance of the main stream, by the length of its course across almost the whole width of England, by the immense area of fertile country which it drains, and by the extent of its navigable waters. These two great river-groups in their junction with the Humber unite in one most important work, the bringing the whole of the agricultural and manufac- turing industries of central and north-eastern England into connection with the greatest seaport of the north- east, the port of JIuU on the Humber. The Ouse and its affluents flow through the agricultural district of the plain of York, and among the coal-mines and iron-works of the Pennine slopes, and the woollen manufactures of the moors. The Trent and its tributaries pass in their course by a great number of the chief manufacturing industries of England — its potteries, its iron-works, its coal-mines, its breweries, its manufactures of lace and stock- ings, and the centres of its com and cattle trade. The immense extent and variety of the industries thus represented by these two river-groups as they fall together into the Humber give to that estuary its very great importance as a sea-port. Besides its posi- tion as the outlet of all these rivers, the Humber has a further valMC derived from its position relatively 8S GEOGRAPHY. [chap. to Other harbours and to the Continent; it is far removed from any rival port, the nearest being that of the Thames estuary in the south-east, and it thus forms the sole highv;ay for trade to North Europe and the ports of the Baltic. III. A third river-group, which lies next to the south, is formed by the streams that unite in the estuary of the Wash, as the rivers of the Ouse and the Trent unite in the Humber. The Wash is a wide, shallow inlet of the sea, with an area of about 300 square miles, bounded on its land side by a low swamp, and utterly useless for all purposes of harbourage. Its basin, 5,800 square miles in extent, or more than one-ninth part of England, is parted from that of the Trent by the low uplands of Northampton and Lincoln (see p. 59). The direction of this higher ground is marked by the springs of the four streams which are thrown down its gentle slopes and emerge on the broad, dreary flats of the Fens, where their waters once mingled in a vast marsh, and where even now they have no clearly defined ' valleys, but wind sluggishly in constantly changing courses through tracts of level ground reclaimed by immense labour, or through low, unhealthy swamps, to the desolate shores of the Wash (see p. 81). The Wit ham rises in the Lincoln uplands and flows northwards along their western side for some distance, then suddenly bends east, cuts through a depression in the ridge, and turns south on its other side, passing through the swamps inclosed between the oolitic uplands and the chalk Wolds to the shores of the VII,] RIVER SYSTEM. 89 Wash. The two next rivers, the Welland and the Nai^ take their rise among a group of river sources in the Northampton uplands. They both flow to the north- east not far apart from one another, inclosing between them the high ground of Rockingham Forest, and drawing closer together as they sink into the low Fen country near the Wash. The last river of this group, the Great Ouse, rises yet further south, on the borders of the Northampton uplands, and soon flows into the low, irregular ground which parts the oolitic from the chalk ranges. Here after endless windings and turnings in the tumbled ground it bends sharply towards the East Anglian uplands, and flows in a direct line to the Wash beneath their white chalk cliffs, with the wide expanse of the Fens stretching away in the distance on its opposite banks. The Ouse is very much the greatest of all these streams, being 156 miles long^ or nearly twice as long as the Witham ; and its basin extends under almost the whole length of the East Anglian Heights and the Chiltern Hills. These rivers of the Wash form a striking contrast to the group of the Humber. They rise on that part of the water-parting which most nearly approaches the eastern coast, and hence their courses are generally shorter. As they all have their springs on the same low uplands, and as all flow through the same mono- tonous level to the same harbourless estuary, the character of the country they traverse is everywhere alike. It is a j)urely agricultural district, thinly inhabited, with scarcely a large town, and lying entirely apart from the manufacturing industry of the Humber 90 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. rivers. For commercial purposes their waters are all but useless. IV. A fourth group is composed of the Rivers of the Basin of the Thames and its Estuary. y'- 'vn^ — ^ E NGLIS H Basin of the Thames. The whole importance of this group depends on the Thames itself. Rising little more than 300 feet above the sea-level, it is the largest river in England, and is navigable for nearly the whole of its great length of 215 miles. It thus forms a water- way across southern England in the same way that VII.] RIVER SYSTEM. 91 the Trent does across central England ; and this water- way communicates with the sea by a wide estuary which is the most important of all English harbours. The basin of the Thames has an area of 6,000 square miles, and may be divided into two parts. (a.) From its springs in the Cotswold Hills, not far from the estuary of the Severn, the river flows through the low ground lying between the Edge Hills and the Marlborough Downs, and thus severs the oolitic from the chalk uplands (see p. 59). After a time it turns due south and cuts straight through the chalk escarpment which before bounded its valley, by a channel which parts the Ilsley Downs from the Chilterns. (d.) It now enters on the second part of its course, and from this point its valley consists chiefly of a great basin of low clay inclosed between ranges of hills, from which lesser streams are thrown do^vn ; to the north lie the Chilterns and the East Anglian up- lands, to the south the Hampshire Downs and the Wealden Heights. The scenery of the Thames valley is throughout of a very quiet character. The only high ground is at the point where the river cuts through the chalk escarpment; everywhere else the river winds peacefully between level banks through a rich agricultural country parted by the whole width of two upland ranges from the manufacturing districts of central England. But as it widens to its estuary the scene suddenly changes. For this estuary, the most splendid natural harbour of the British Islands, has by its form and position been destined to become the trading centre of the world. It is wider and 92 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. mere commodious than the Humber, deeper and safer than the Wash. Placed in the south-eastern angle of England, it opens on the narrow channel which forms a highway for the commerce of northern Europe, while lying as it does midway between all the European seas, from Gibraltar to the North Cape, and being situated at the centre of the main lines of navi- gation of the world, it has necessarily drawn to itself commerce from every quarter of the globe. On its banks has grown up the greatest and most populous city of the earth, — Lo7idon; and from this city to the sea, throughout the entire length of the estuary, its shore is lined with warehouses and dockyards filled with shipping from foreign lands, while its waters are covered with countless vessels, carrying the immense trade of the greatest of all trading countries. Four streams join the Thames on its northern banks, and four on its southern. Of the northern streams two, the Cheniiell and the Thame, meet it in the first part of its course, just before it breaks through the chalk uplands ; two more, the Colne and the Lea, join it in its lower valley. On the southern side falls in the Ken?iet, whose course lies below the Hampshire Downs, and which joins the Thames at the point where it passes into its lower valley. Further on two rivers are thrown down from the south, the Wey and the Mole; and in the east, where the Thames estuary opens into the ocean, it takes up the Afedway, which alone is of any considerable size and navigable for some distance, and which by vrr.] RIVER SYSTEM. 93 a branch called the East Swale encircles the island of Sheppey at its mouth. These rivers flow directly into the Thames ; but there are besides a few small streams included in the same group which fall into the wide bay formed by its estuary. Most of these come from the low eastern slopes of the East Anglian uplands. The Yare and the Wavefiey empty themselves into the North Sea as the coast bends inwards towards the Thames estuary (see p. 81) ; farther south are the (9rar//and the Siour, which unite at their mouths to form a small estuary. On the southern shores of the bay a second river Stour falls into the North Sea, which once enclosed by a branch stream, now dried up, the Isle of Thanet at its mouth. These rivers are of no importance in their very short course, save for the little harbours formed at their mouths. [B.] The Rivers of the South. All the rivers of southern England have their sources along the lesser line of water-parting which crosses the island from the Atlantic to the North Sea, and flow northwards to the Thames and Bristol Channel, or southward to the English Channel (see p. 77). I. The first group is formed by the rivers of the Weald, rivers small in size, crossing a country but thinly inhabited, and of no commercial importance. All have the same origin in a line of high ground which crosses the centre of the Weald from east to west (sec p. 90). This line of heights throws down small streams to north and south. The first cut channels for themselves through the North Downs, and so make their 94 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. way into the Thames or the German Ocean. Among these are the Mole, Medway, and Siour. The rivers of the southern slopes are of very Httle consequence. The largest of them is the Ouse, which falls into the English Channel west of Beachy Head : and yet further to the west is the Arun. II. A second group, yet smaller in numbers but made up of larger streams, is that of the rivers of the southern chalk downs (see p. 96). The plain of Southampton and of the New Forest is inclosed on three sides by chalk uplands, whose waters are thrown down to the English Channel. The smallest of these, the Itchen, and the Test or Anton, on the eastern side of the New Forest, fall into the estuary called South- ampton Water, behind the Isle of Wight. To the west of the New Forest is a much larger river, the Avon, navigable for many miles. A fourth river, the Frome, flows in a valley running east and west below the long line of the Purbeck heights, and at its mouth forms the inlet of Foole Harbour, whose opening lies in a right line with the Isle of Wight. III. The Rivers of Devon and Cornwall form a third group, also of small importance, since in this narrow peninsula the distance from the heights where the rivers spring to the sea is so short that no streams of any size can be formed (see p. 96). The two largest on the south-eastern side are the Exe and the Tamar. The Exe rises in the bleak Exmoor heights and flows southwards across the plain below them to the English Channel. The Tamar has its source in the heights above Bideford Bay whence it also flows south vii ] RIVER SYSTEM. 95 to form at its mouth on the Channel the estuary of Plymouth Sound. Three streams are thrown down from the water-parting to the north-west : the Tawe and the Torridge to Bideford Bay, and the Parrd, to the Bristol Channel. [C] The Rivers of the West. When we pass from the southern to the western coast of England we find a water-system of far greater importance, containing groups of rivers of very great size and of even greater commercial importance than the rivers of the eastern plains. It is true that the streams which flow westward from the main water-parting of England are fewer and generally shorter than those which flow eastward. But among the rivers of the western coast we must include the streams drawn from the mountains of Wales, of which some flow eastward into English land and unite with streams from the English water-parting to form rivers of con- siderable size. The main cause, however, of the commercial value of these streams lies in the great advantage which they have over the eastern rivers in their position to the westward, by which they command the whole of the Irish trade, and the vast and constantly increasing trade with the New World. The rivers of the west are divided into four distinct groups. Two of the.se groups, the rivers of the Bristol Channel^ and the rivers of the plains of Cheshire and Lancashire are great centres of commercial activity corresponding to the groups of the Thames and the number in the east (see p. 77). The two remaining 96 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. groups, those of the Welsh and the Cumbriaii mou7itains, are composed of small rivers of less note. I. In the group of the Bristol Channel the rivers of England and Wales are so closely united Card PI a An % I I. of WiTf^ p St^nf'nrdi Geoa'-K.^tai' Watershed of thk Bristol. Channel, that it is difficult to separate them ; for while some streams of this group belong wholly to England, others belong equally to both countries. VII.] RIVER SYSTEM. 97 Five chief rivers fall into the inner part of the Bristol Channel from the various heights — Welsh mountains or English uplands — which lie to north and south and east of it The greatest of all these rivers is that which lies in the centre of the group — the Severn; into its estuary the four other rivers pour their waters, two on the northern, and two on the southern side. (i.) The Severn takes its rise near the summit of the great mountain of Plinlimmon in the centre of Wales. Its upper course lies in Wales, where it flows in a north-easterly direction through the wild moorlands which branch off from Plinlimmon ; but as it breaks out on the plain which bounds the Welsh mountains it enters on English ground (p. 59). Here the river bends suddenly southwards and skirts the borders of the irregular heights of eastern Wales. On its right bank in this portion of its course lie long ridges of slate-hills, outliers of the mountains beyond, the Stiper Stones, the Long Mynd, Wenlock Edge, and the group of the Clee Hills ; along its left bank stretches the plain of central England broken by the Wrekin and the Dudley Hills. The rest of its course to the Bristol Channel lies in a deep valley not many miles wide, inclosed between steep ridges of hills. The western wall of this valley is formed by the Abbcrley and the Malvern Hills, the east em by the Clent and the Lickey Hills ; while the broader opening which forms the estuary of the river lies between the Cotswold Hills and the Forest of Dean. u 98 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. The Severn has a total length of 158 miles, and is thus the third greatest river in England ; and its basin is not only of considerable extent — 4.350 square miles — but also of great commercial importance, since its estuary is driven through the midst of the coal- measures of the south-west, while its affluents lead into the very centre of England, connecting it with the basins of the Trent and the Thames. By the great length of its navigable course from the point where the river reaches the plain, and by the splendid estuary at its mouth, which is flooded at high water by a tide that rises higher than in any other harbour in Europe and carries large vessels safely over shoals and sandbanks, the Severn is naturally fitted to form one of the great trading centres of the west ; and its port of Bristol has drawn to itself the chief commerce of Ireland and the West Indies. The tributaries of the Severn are mostly small. It receives two streams from the Welsh mountains : one, the Virnwy, reaches it as it first touches the plain; the second, the Teme, makes its way to join it through the gap between the Abberley and the Malvern Hills. Two small streams come to it from the rising grounds of the central plain of England, the Tern from the north, the Stour from the Dudley Hills on the east. But a much greater river than these empties itself into the Severn ; this is the Avon. For its source we must go far away to the upland range near Rockingham Forest where we have already found the springs of the Welland and the Nen (see p. 81). While these rivers flow eastward to the Wash, the Avon falls down the VII.] RIVER SYSTEM, 99 western slopes of the uplands and winds along the base of the oolitic range past the Edge Hills to the Vale of Evesham below the Cotswolds, and so on to the Severn. (2.) The second of the rivers which merge in the Bristol Channel is the IVye. At the opening and close of its career the Wye is closely connected with the Severn : their springs lie side by side on the same mountain of Plinlimmon, and they empty themselves side by side into the same estuary. But through the rest of their courses they are widely separated. While the Severn turns to the north-east towards the plains of Cheshire and central England, the Wye flows south- wards, and journeys among the desert, almost unin- habited moorlands of south-eastern Wales, till it enters from the west on the fertile plain of Hereford, and winds among its hills, its orchards, its hop-gardens, and its cider manufactories, to the Forest of Dean. From this point it soon makes its way to the Bristol Channel. (3.) The Us/:, the third river of the group which meet in the same channel, is a much smaller stream than the Wye, though it is more striking for the grandeur of its scenery. This river rises at the western end of the Black Mountains, and flows in a deep valley eastward along the foot of the chief mountain chain of South Wales, the Black Mountains and Brecknock Beacon, whose rugged sides tower above the deep bed of the stream like a gigantic wall. It finally bends round the eastern extremity of this chain, and falls into the Severn estuary not far from the Wye. H a loo GEOGRAPHY. [chap. (4.) The two streams which flow into the southern side of the Bristol Channel, the Avo?t and the Farret, come from the uplands which occupy the country to the east of it. The Avon rises in the Cotswolds, and though its course is short, at its opening into the estuary of the Severn it forms the most important har- bour of the Bristol Channel, that of Bristol itself. The Parret comes from the Dorset heights, uplands of the southern water-parting. Its lower valley lies between the two ridges of the Polden and Quantock Hills as far as Bridgwater Bay, above which lies the port of Bridgwater with a considerable shipping-trade. II. A second group of western waters is formed by the Welsh rivers, whose courses lie wholly within Wales. The line of high ground in which these streams take their rise strikes down the centre of Wales from north to south, near the western coast (p. 46) ; and its chief rivers — the Severn, the Wye, the Usk, and the Dee — are thrown down from it east- ward into the deep depression which extends from the Irish Sea to the British Channel, and severs England from the Welsh mountain group. In this low ground these rivers enter on English soil, and as they He to westward of the English water-parting, they are by the character of the country thrown into the Western Sea (see p. 21). But there are four lesser streams which never cross the borders of Wales. Two of these rivers lie in South Wales; the other two in North Wales. {a.) The To7t'y and the Teify, the two streams of the south, have their sources close together in the upper CTiu of that long range of heights which begins in vn.l RIVER SYSTEM. loi Plinlimmon and ends on the shores of St. Bride's Bay (see p. 96). The Towy is thrown down their southern slopes, and pours its waters into the sea in Carmarthen Bay. The Teify runs in a deep valley along the middle part of the range, and finally falls down its northern slopes into Cardigan Bay. (d.) The two northern streams are the Conway and the Clwyd^ which run on either side of the low slaty hills of Denbighshu-e to the Irish Sea (see p. 102). The little valley of the Conway, with its pleasant fer- tile fields, lies between the Denbighshire hills and the barren mountains of the Snowdon range. On the eastern side of the same Denbighshire hills lies the parallel valley of the Clwyd, shut in to the eastward by the hills of Flintshire. III. A third group, that of the Rivers of Cheshire and Lancashire, is made up, like the group of the Bristol Channel, of streams from both England and Wales. The low marshy coast of the plain which lies along the Irish Sea between the Welsh and Cumbrian mountains is broken by three great estuaries, those of the Dee, the Mersey,* and the Ribble, the first two lying very close together with but a narrow neck of land between them, while the third is half-way up the line of coast to the north of these. (i.) The head waters of the Dee rise in the range of the Berwyn Mountains in Wales. Not far from its source the river passes through Bala Lake, and winding along the base of the mountain range escapes by the vale of Llangollen into the low plain of Cheshire, where it turns northward, and flows in a wide full stream by the GEOGRAPHY. [chap. WATER SH ED OF THE IRISH SEA VII.] RIVER SYSTEM. 103 eastern borders of the Welsh mountains till it falls by a very wide estuary into the sea. This estuary once formed a port of great value, but has in the course of centuries been so silted up as to make it worthless for shipping purposes, and is now at low water a merfe expanse of sand. (2.) The Mersey is the most important river of this group. It is formed by the union of several streams coming from the Pennine moors, and its course passes across the low plain between these moors and the sea. By the magnificent estuary through which it enters the sea, and by the marvellous wealth of the country it traverses, the Mersey has become the most important river in England after the Thames. On its southern bank lies the luxuriant pasture-land of Cheshire, a wide stretch of low country which reaches from the Mersey to the Welsh mountains (p. 59). Along its northern banks is a vast coal-field which, beginning on the high slopes of the Pennine moors, extends through southern Lancashire nearly to the sea-shore, and is occupied throughout its whole extent by the cotton manufactures of England. Easy communication with these wealthy districts on either side of the Mersey is secured by two streams which flow to it from north and south. The Iru'dl comes to meet it from the north, having first gathered up into itself all the streams which traverse the manufacturing district The Weaver^ which falls into its estuary, comes from the rich southern pasture-lands ^ and through the heart of the sunken district in the centre of the plain, where the salt-mines and springs of brine I04 GEOGRAPHY. [chap. occur, the centre of the English salt manufacture. The Mersey, therefore, by its own course and by that of its tributaries, comes in contact with both the agri- cultural and the manufacturing industries of England, and opens for them a highway to the sea of the first importance. As the Humber, on the opposite coast of England, is the sea-port of the woollen trade, so is the Mersey the sea-port of the cotton trade. But the Mersey possesses great advantages over the Humber, both as being the geographical centre of Great Britain and Ireland and the natural point of convergence for their commerce, and as having its outlook, not to- wards Norway and Denmark, but towards America with its immense commercial resources. It has even taken a higher place than the estuary of the Severn by its situation on the very borders of those coal- measures on which the greatest manufactures of the world have grown up. There is no port in any country, save that of London, with so great a trading industry as the Mersey ; and in fact, if it is below London in the amount of its imports, it exceeds it in its exports. Not less than half of the manufactured goods sent out of the British Islands pass through its great ports of Liverpool and Birkenhead, where its estuary is lined with docks for five miles, each dock representing a different trade and different nation. (3.) The third river of this group, the Ribble, is of less importance. It rises in that knot of head-waters where the greatest number of the northern rivers of the Humber have their springs, the Wharfe, Aire, &c. Its upper course lies aniong barren moorlands ; its lower VII.] RIVER SYSTEM. 105 valley and estuary cut through the marsh which here lines the shore. The harbour of Preston lies at the head of the Qstuary. IV. The northernmost river group of the western coast is that formed by the Cumbrian rivers. Four streams belong to this group. Two of these rise near the line of the main water-parting of England, and form by their valleys the eastern boundary of the Cumbrian mountains ; while two smaller streams rise within the circle of the Cumbrian mountains them- selves and are thence thrown down westward to the sea. {a.) The two greater rivers are the Edtn and the Lune^ whose springs lie close together on the Pennine moors, on the opposite side of the water-parting from the sources of the Ure and the Swale. As they fall down the hill-sides to the lower ground, the Lune turns south and flows in a steep, wild, and narrow valley to Lancaster Bay ; while the Eden bends north- wards and passes through a broad fertile plain, bounded by the Cumbrian hills on the west and by the Pennines on the east, to the Solway Firth. This valley forms a valuable tract of rich agricultural land, thrust in like a wedge between the barren hills of northern England. (^.) The two lesser streams of this group spring from the Cumbrian heights; these are the Duddon^ which flows in a wild mountain valley to the sea on the western side of Furness ; and the river Denvetit^ which rises in the centre of the mountains, and drains many of the lakes on its way westward to the sea. I06 GEOGRAPHY. [ciiAP. Table of River Groups. I. Northumbrian Rivers — {Tyne, Wear, Tees.) II. Rivers of the H umber — (i.) Ouse — {Ure, Swale, Nidd, Wharf e, Aire, Don, Derwent.) (2.) Trent— {Dove, Derwent, Tame, Soar.) III. Rivers of the Wash — {Witham, Welland, Nen, Ouse.) IV. Rivers of the Thames basin — {Thames, Cherwell, Thame, Colne, Lea, Ke^tnef, Wey, Mole, Medway, Yare, Waveney, Stour.) V. Rivers of the Weald — {Ouse, Arun.) VI. Rivers of the Southern Downs — {lichen, Teslj Avon, Frome.) VII. Rivers of the Bristol Channel— {Severn, Wye, Usk, Avon, Paj'ret) VIII. Welsh Rivers— {Towy, Teify, Conway, Clwyd.) IX. Rivers of Cheshire and Lancashire — {Dee, Mersey, Ribble.) X. Cumbrian Rivers — {Lune, Duddon, Derwent, Eden.) VII,] RIVER SYSTEM. 107 Rivers. Lenglh ID miles. Area of Basin in square miles. Thames .... Severn /-Trent . . Humber-j Ouse . . IHumber . Great Ouse .... Wye Nen Tees Dee Witham Eden Avon (of Bristol) . . Usk Tyne Welland Wear Yare Avon (of Salisbury) . Mersey 215 .158 147 114 38 156 135 100 79 70 80 69 62 65 73 70 65 48 61 68 6,160 4,350 [ 9,550 2,980 1,609 1,077 708 813 1,079 1 891 634 1,130 760 456 880 1,132 1,000 ENGLAND. COUNTIES. U ■' ^^'-