NIDDERD ALE HEAD.
THE Bradford Corporation, in the performance of a necessary duty, have invaded one of the wildest and most remote regions of the Yorkshire Moors to increase their water-supply. The head of Nidderdale is to provide " compensation reservoirs " for the Bradford water-system, and two of these artificial lakes are to be constructed within a few miles of the river's source, almost at the foot of Great Whernside Hill, beyond the limits not only of cultivation, but even of human habitation. The lower reaches of the river Nid, by Pately Bridge, Ripley, and Knaresborough, do not differ greatly from those of the other Yorkshire streams flowing into the Ouse, but in its first beginnings among the desolate and lonely fells above Middlesmoor and Ramegill, the birthplace of Eugene Aram, the land of fosses, becks, gills, scars, and tarns, it excels them all in wildness and beauty. It is characteristic of the river Nid that in its early course the evasive waters seek all means of returning once more to the bosom of the hills. The stream has scarcely emerged from its parent-moor before it disappears in part in a swallet-hole in the centre of the channel. A mile lower it plunges into the limestone cavern of Goyden Pot, and tunnels through the hills. Its first tributary, the How Steen Beck, has sunk its channel 60 ft. below the level of the valley, and in this narrow and fantastic chasm ever eats its way deeper into the rocky foundations of the dale. From crest to foot the gorge of the How Steen Beck has been cut from the solid rock, which has here the appearance of madrepore marble. Its walls and floor are carved and chipped by the stone- chisels wielded by the winter floods, and though draped on the higher levels with every form of hanging moss and climbing plant, the channel of the stream lies clean- cut between the bare faces of the rock. Along the bottom the clear brown water lies in a succession of marble baths, in which the trout are as clearly seen as if in an aquarium tank. These fish must live entirely on the insects which fall into the stream from the walls of the glen, or are carried down by the tributary becks above, for no subaqueous weed or plant can take root upon the sides and bases of the marble cisterns, which contain neither mud nor earth-deposits in which water-insects could be hatched. Whether viewed from above
the gorge or from the level of the water which shines in the depths below, this moorland torrent-bed is of unique interest. The sides, in place of exhibiting the steep scarp usual to the banks of mountain-streams, are lined with a series and sueze.ssion of horizontal shelves and recesses, the latter being cut so deep and narrow that they run back beyond the reach of sight into the sides of the ravine. In places, a series of a dozen of these shelves and recesses hang one above the other. On the topmost, trees and bushes grow and overhang the gorge. The middle shelves are covered with masses of fern and arum leaves, with ivy creeping to the edge and descending in trails and wreaths. Beneath this, tiny streams and springs trickle over the rock-shelves, and here, protected from every wind by the overhanging screens above, and wrapped in the semi-shadows and streaming moisture of the canon, the mosses grow, not merely in the luxuriance common to such situations, but in pendent masses like the shaggy fleeces of the unshorn moorland sheep. Creeping to the edges of the shelves, the moss hangs like arras, descending for many feet in sheets and cascades, deeper through than the arm can reach, and heavy with the creeping drops of moorland water that elide and trickle to the outer fringe of the moss-curtains and fall like crystal beads into the still waters sleeping in the cisterns below. When the waters are low in early spring, and the " beck " is a mere series of marble-enclosed pools, between which the waters trickle and descend almost unseen among the boulders on the floor, the history of the canon and its shelved and recessed sides is easily read. The ravine has not been eaten away by the dissolving forces of the water acting on the limestone. It has been chiselled out by the winter floods, which have used the boulders and stones like rock-drills, and worked the marble at successive depths. At the bottom the process is still going on, or was when the last winter flood descended. The "chisels" lie on the floor of the stream, or high and dry upon its sides, rounded boulders of the same rock as the sides of the glen, of all sizes from that of a corn-sack to that of an ostrich's egg. In a high flood the rush of water from the moors above sometimes raises the torrent to a depth of 30 ft., and the boulders large and small are whirled along the marble bottom, spun round and round in the eddies, and clattered and dashed against the sides as they harry along the bottom. Each mass performs a three- fold work. It cuts the bottom of the fluor downwards, dashes pieces from its fellow boulders, and above all scoops away the sides of the channeL Here, for some reason, it does far more work than upon the floor, hollowing a deep groove in the side and travelling along in this like a graving- tool. Thus the boulder-chisels will have cut a recess from four to six feet deep on either side of the channel before they have lowered the centre of the latter more than two feet. When this is lowered further the boulders crowd into the centre, deepen the channel, and once more begin to scoop the deep grooves in the sides, which, as this process has been repeated through ages, have left the alternate shelves and re. ceases which adorn the walls of the chasm with such fantastic beauty. If the moss be stripped from these, or the under- sides examined, the oval hollows made by the stroke of the boulders are seen as clearly as those which were cut in the present year in the floods of January.
The ever-increasing wildness of the valley of the Nid stream itself is in curious contrast to the rich vegetation which clusters in this sheltered canon of the Beck. The surface of the hills is stripped to the most meagre covering of thin grey grass ; trees and plantations dwindle and disappear, and the beauties of the valley concentrate beside the actual course of the stream. Above " Goyden Pot" lies the region of water- falls. The stream slips over beds and sheets of stone lying in flat layers and split into squares like gigantic paving-stones. When this bed-rock is displaced the fracture forms a step across the stream, over which the water falls with all the regularity of the cascades in a river scene by Claude Lorraine. In places the stream dashes down a whole " flight " of these steps in succession, and then spreads wide and shallow on the broad, flat slabs below, where the chaffinches bathe and sun themselves on the sun-warmed pavement. The half-wild sheep when changing pastures descend from the hills and, following their leader cross the river at these shallows below the falls, and there the last trees in the dale, wind-bent and lichen-covered alders, fringe the stream. The last miles of the dale head lie almost in the lap of the High Fells,—Whernside, and the mass of commanding moors which cluster round Ciniston. The foot of this wild region in which the Nid river rises seems marked off from all human habitation. The stone walls cease, enclosures disap- pear, the clean-cut scars of limestone and shale give place to formless boulders of millstone-grin, the newly-born stream trickles feebly through wastes of sand and shingle, bordered by acres of dead, dry, frost-burnt grass, unrelieved by bush or flower. All trees have disappeared, and the whole region looks as if newly rescued from glacial ice. Here winter lingers long, and the sole sign of spring is the coltafoot flowers, pushing up through a sand-heap left by winter floods. From this valley of desolation, which is destined to contain the new reservoir lakes, rises the great "scar" which marks the northern edge of Middlesmoor. This almost vertical hill-face is a typical example of the transition region which lies between the dale and stream, the haunt of peewits and sheep, to the heather-moor proper, the land of grouse and curlews. On the limestone hills the "scar" is usually a precipitous cliff fringing the highest level of the moor, like the Niton cliffs between Yentnor and Black Gang Chine, "scars" such as that which Kingsley pictures in his description of " Harthoven. Fell." More often,. as in the present case, it is a steep but accessible slope, barely climbable, growing little but coarse grass, patches of rushes, and deep dark-green brush-moss, studded on all the steepest parts with corners and elbows of "millstone-grit," as if the- bones of the hill had pushed through its clothes. At the writer's last visit to the dale head, when half-way up the scar, a change of weather suddenly wrapped the moor in. mist, which descended, and shut out all sight of the dale below. The grey impenetrable cloud hung like a curtain between the rock-strewn ascent and the world below, and the only token that land and life lay beyond was the screams of the curlews hurrying hither and thither, unseen, but vociferous, in the mist. When the fog once more lifted, we seemed transported to another and distant region. The flat summit of the moor had been attained under the screen of the mist, and thousands of acres of rolling heather lay on either hand. Northwards, whence we had travelled, the level line of moor led so evenly to the edge of the scar that no sign of dale or stream or any land beyond appeared. The moor top is one thousand six hundred feet above the sea, yet vegetation in the form of heather is far more luxuriant than on the lower slopes of the moor, and its sole inhabitants, the grouse, more numerous than any species of wild-bird in the more sheltered portions of the dale.
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