Page:Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1867).djvu/105

 places where it is conspicuous between Gunnerton and Alnwick. At Wallington the stream is a mere brook, some 6 or 8 yards across, between grassy pastures, with the fine old hall and its rich woods looking down upon it from an easy slope on the north. About Meldon and Mitford the banks are deep and pleasantly wooded. Below this latter village there is a steep bank planted with beech and sycamore for at least a mile on the north side of the stream, and the bed is in some places filled with rock and overhung with alder, bird-cherry, and willows, amongst which grow Trollius, Myrrhis, Crepis paludosa, and Cardamine amara. The town of Morpeth is situated in a hollow but little above the level of the stream 5 miles from its mouth, with wooded banks rising rather abruptly to a height of about 100 feet to enclose it.

It is a pleasant ride in summer-time from Morpeth by the coach to Long Horsley, up a gradual ascent through a thinly-populated and thinly-cultivated country where brake, furze, and broom still linger in the lanes, and honeysuckle and wild roses cluster in the hedges, till at last the brow of the bank is gained, and Simonside and the Cheviots leap up suddenly into view. The stream is large enough to admit small vessels as high as Morpeth, and flows between deep wooded banks below Bothal Castle into an estuary at Camboise. The area of the district is about 200 square miles.

6. NORTH TYNE DISTRICT. This district has an area of about 400 square miles, embracing a tract 20 miles across in both directions, including the western border of the county from the Cheviots southward for half the distance to the Durham border, a large proportion of its surface being uncultivated grassy or heath-clad moor between 500 and