lower strata of storm-clouds, which is a convenient thing for the
people who live in these parts; for long ago they used the peak as a
sign of approaching storms, having reduced the warning to the
easily-remembered couplet:

'When Roseberry Topping wears a cap,
Let Cleveland then beware of a clap.'

From the fact that you can see this remarkable peak from almost every
point of the compass except south-westwards, it must follow that from
the top of the hill there are views in all those directions. But to see
so much of the country at once comes as a surprise to everyone.
Stretching inland towards the backbone of England, there is spread out
a huge tract of smiling country, covered with a most complex network of
hedges, which gradually melt away into the indefinite blue edge of the
world where the hills of Wensleydale rise from the plain. Looking
across the little town of Guisborough, lying near the shelter of the
hills, to the broad sweep of the North Sea, this piece of Yorkshire
seems so small that one almost expects to see the Cheviots away in the
north. But, beyond the winding Tees and the drifting smoke of the great
manufacturing towns on its banks, one must be content with the county
of Durham, a huge section of which is plainly visible. Turning towards
the brown moorlands, the cultivation is exchanged for ridge beyond
ridge of total desolation--a huge tract of land in this crowded England
where the population for many square miles at a time consists of the
inmates of a lonely farm or two in the circumscribed cultivated areas
of the dales.

Eight or nine hundred years ago these valleys were choked up with
forests. The Early British inhabitants were more inclined to the