Eight or nine hundred years ago these valleys were choked up with forests.  The Early British inhabitants were more inclined to the hill-tops than the hollows, if the innumerable indications of their settlements be any guide, and there is every reason for believing that many of the hollows in the folds of the heathery moorlands were rarely visited by man.  Thus, the suggestion has been made that a few of the last representatives of now extinct monsters may have survived in these wild retreats, for how otherwise do we find persistent stories in these parts of Yorkshire, handed down we cannot tell how many centuries, of strange creatures described as ‘worms’?  At Loftus they show you the spot where a ‘grisly worm’ had its lair, and in many places there are traditions of strange long-bodied dragons who were slain by various valiant men.

When we remember that the last wolf was killed in Scotland in the seventeenth century, that Africa is still adding to the list of living animals, and that the caves at Kirkdale, near Kirby Moorside, revealed the bones of elephants, tigers, hyenas, and rhinoceroses, in an excellent state of preservation, though they were all broken, we are inclined to believe that these strange stories may have had some basis of fact.

On Easby Moor, a few miles to the south of Roseberry Topping, the tall column to the memory of Captain Cook stands like a lighthouse on this inland coast-line.  The lofty position it occupies among these brown and purply-green heights makes the monument visible over a great tract of the sailor’s native Cleveland.  The people who live in Marton, the village of his birthplace, can see the memorial of their hero’s fame, and the country lads of to-day are constantly reminded of the success which attended the industry and perseverance of a humble Marton boy.

The cottage where James Cook was born in 1728 has gone, but the field in which it stood is called Cook’s Garth.  The shop at Staithes, generally spoken of as a ‘huckster’s,’ where Cook was apprenticed as a boy, has also disappeared; but, unfortunately, that unpleasant story of his having taken a shilling from his master’s till, when the attractions of the sea proved too much for him to resist, persistently clings to all accounts of his early life.  There seems no evidence to convict him of this theft, but there are equally no facts by which to clear him.  But if we put into the balance his subsequent term of employment at Whitby, the excellent character he gained when he went to sea, and Professor J.K.  Laughton’s statement that he left Staithes ’after some disagreement with his master,’ there seems every reason to believe that the story is untrue.  If it were otherwise, the towering monument on Easby Moor would be a questionable inspiration to posterity.