Page:Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1867).djvu/106

88 1000 feet in elevation. For 25 miles the watershed ridge of the two branches of the North Tyne forms the boundary between Northumberland and Roxburghshire. For 15 miles from north-west to south-east the two dales, Redesdale and North Tynedale, run parallel with one another, broad grassy dales with villages and farm-houses thinly scattered at the bottom or along the banks and winding streams with numerous branches that lead up gradually into the recesses of the moors. Between the Reed-water and upper part of the Coquet there is a broad continuous ridge of heathery grit-crested moor, of which the highest point, Ridlees Cairn, attains 1346 feet. Carter Fell, on the south of the road on the Scotch border, at the very head of the Reed overlooking Liddesdale, attains 1600 feet. Near the head of the Chattlehope Burn, the first stream of any consequence that falls into the Reedwater in the west is a fine waterfall amongst the moors called Chattlehope Spout. The upper part of this dale is very thinly populated, and seldom visited; but during the last two hundred years the hand of agricultural improvement has been steadily at work, and the wide morasses and neglected heaths of the days of the moss-troopers have been many of them drained and turned into sheep-walks, and here, as further north, of the natural forests of the glens, the primeval woods of birch, alder, oak, rowan, and willow, but few relics remain. At Rochester, 10 miles south-east of Carter Fell, are marks of Roman occupation. A few miles lower down is Otterburn, the scene of the skirmish between the Percies and Douglasses, which the ballad of Chevy Chase commemorates, and then comes Elsdon, the principal village of the dale. Here Redesdale may be considered to end. On each side a conspicuous hill, under 1000 feet in height, rises up to guard the entrance, that on the west called Hareshaw Moor, and that on the east the Ottercaps; and the stream turns suddenly to the south-west, flowing 6 miles in that direction before it joins the North Tyne at Reedsmouth.

The North Tyne rises in a broad hollow on the western edge of the county, being formed by the union of several streams which flow from a crescent of heathery gritstone hills extending from Carter Fell, Carlingtooth Fell, Peel Fell, and Deadwater Fell,