rough
Head, roughly parallel with the Oolitic escarpment. Successive
portions of this line of heights are known as the Western Downs, the
White Horse Hills, the Chiltern Hills, the East Anglian Ridge, the
Lincolnshire Wolds and the Yorkshire Wolds. The rivers from the gentle
southern slopes of the Oolitic heights pass by deep valleys through
the Chalk escarpments, and flow on to the Tertiary plains within. The
typical scenery of the Chalk country is unrelieved by small streams of
running water; the hills rise into rounded downs, often capped with
fine clumps of beech, and usually covered with thin turf, affording
pasture for sheep. The chalk, when exposed on the surface, is an
excellent foundation for roads, and the lines of many of the Roman
"streets" were probably determined by this fact. The Chalk country
extends over part of Dorset, most of Wiltshire, a considerable portion
of Hampshire and Oxfordshire, most of Hertfordshire and
Cambridgeshire, the west of Norfolk and Suffolk, the east of
Lincolnshire, and the East Riding of Yorkshire. From the upland of
Salisbury Plain, which corresponds to the axis of the anticline
marking the centre of the double fold into which the strata of the
south of England have been thrown, the great Chalk escarpment runs
north-eastward; fingers of Chalk run eastward one each side of the
Weald, forming the North and South Downs, while the southern edge of
the Chalk sheet appears from beneath the Tertiary strata at several
places on the south coast, and especially in the Isle of Wight.
Flamborough Head, the South Foreland, Beachy Head and the Needles are
examples of the fine scenery into which chalk weathers where it fronts
the sea, and these white cliffs gave to the island its early name of
Albion. The Chalk is everywhere very thinly peopled, except where it
is thickly covered with boulder clay, and so becomes fertile, or where
it is scored by drift-filled valleys, in which the small towns and
villages are dotted along the high roads. The thickest covering of
drift is found in the Holderness district of Yorkshire, where, from
the chalk cliffs of Flamborough Head to the sandspit of Spurn Point,
the whole coast is formed of boulder-clay resting on chalk. Of the few
towns in the Chalk country, the interest of which is largely
historical or scholastic, Salisbury, Winchester, Marlborough and
Cambridge are the most distinguis