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.