Page:Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1867).djvu/94

76 the heart of this plateau, from west to east, to join the Wooler Water a little above Earl, flows a stream which is called the Common Burn, with a fork on the north called Broadstruther Burn. Both are bare moorland rivulets till they unite, after which the banks are wooded, and there is a narrow craggy ravine with a waterfall at the bottom, about which grow ' and '. But the most interesting glens of the Cheviot, whether for the botanist or lover of scenery, are those which penetrate the great ridge on the north, and contain the sykes which unite to form the College Burn. Within less than a mile from the cairn these decline in level 1600 feet, steep, bare, treeless ravines, their rivulets fed from innumerable bright-green well-heads, where copious fountains gush clear and cool out of the hill-side, flanked by embankments of loose stones or precipitous columns of red or grey porphyritic crag, the stream at the bottom leaping from terrace to terrace down a channel so steep that it is almost one continuous waterfall in the rainy season. To reach these from Wooler the best way is not to take the Earl road at all, but that which leads out of the head of the town on the west, and follow a foot-path across the central heathery plateau, the portion of which nearest the town is called Wooler Common, crossing the Common Burn where the two branches join, and following the Broadstruther Fork out to its head. There is a horse-track all the way, that leads into the hollow of the College Burn, which is an open grassy depression of no particular interest, except that just above its very head, in the direction of the highest Cheviot cairn, is the station for Cornus suecica. The highest farm-house on the College is called Goldscleugh, and is a little over 1000 feet in altitude. There is a small ravine above it, but the three principal ones are further west. From the next farm-house, about half a mile lower down, we can look right, up two of the rocky ravines, one of which, called Dunsdale, originates in the east, and the other, called the Brizzle or Bizzle, on the west of the western Cheviot cairn. On the flank of this ridge, from 1200 feet down to the stream, we have one of the few relics of the primeval forest of Cheviot, consisting here almost altogether