few yards off the road makes a sharp double bend to get up Saltersgate Brow, the hill that overlooks the enormous circular bowl of Horcum Hole, where Levisham Beck rises.  The farmer whose buildings can be seen down below contrives to paint the bottom of the bowl a bright green, but the ling comes hungrily down on all sides, with evident longings to absorb the scanty cultivation.  The Dwarf Cornel, a little mountain-plant which flowers in July, is found in this ‘hole.’  A few patches have been discovered in the locality, but elsewhere it is not known south of the Cheviots.

Away to the north the road crosses the desolate country like a pale-green ribbon.  It passes over Lockton High Moor, climbs to 700 feet at Tom Cross Rigg, and then disappears into the valley of Eller Beck, on Goathland Moor, coming into view again as it climbs steadily up to Sleights Moor, nearly 1,000 feet above the sea.  An enormous stretch of moorland spreads itself out towards the west.  Near at hand is the precipitous gorge of Upper Newton Dale, backed by Pickering Moor, and beyond are the heights of Northdale Rigg and Rosedale Common, with the blue outlines of Ralph Cross and Danby Head right on the horizon.

The smooth, well-built road, with short grass filling the crevices between the stones, urges us to follow its straight course northwards; but the sternest and most remarkable portion of Upper Newton Dale lies to the left, across the deep heather, and we are tempted aside to reach the lip of the sinuous gorge nearly a mile away to the west, where the railway runs along the marshy and boulder-strewn bottom of a natural cutting 500 feet deep.  The cliffs drop down quite perpendicularly for 200 feet, and the remaining distance to the bed of the stream is a rough slope, quite bare in places, and in others densely grown over with trees; but on every side the fortress-like scarps are as stern and bare as any that face the ocean.  Looking north or south the gorge seems completely shut in.  There is much the same effect when steaming through the Kyles of Bute, for there the ship seems to be going full speed for the shore of an entirely enclosed sea, and here, saving for the tell-tale railway, there seems no way out of the abyss without scaling the perpendicular walls.  The rocks are at their finest at Killingnoble Scar, where they take the form of a semicircle on the west side of the railway.  The scar was for a very long period famous for the breed of hawks, which were specially watched by the Goathland men for the use of James I., and the hawks were not displaced from their eyrie even by the incursion of the railway into the glen, and only recently became extinct.

Newton Dale Well, at the foot of the scar, used to attract the country people for miles round, to the fair held there on Midsummer Day, when strange ceremonies were performed in order to insure the beneficent influence of the waters.  The custom survived until the beginning of last century, but now it is not easy to even find the position of the well.  Very few people living in Whitby or Pickering had any idea of the grandeur of the scenery of Newton Dale when the first official journey was made by railway between the two towns.  This was in 1836, but the coaches were drawn by horses on the levels and up the inclines, for it was before the days of the steam-locomotive.