the Esk, as a natural harbour is much the
best. The Sea appears to have been retiring slowly for ages from this
coast. From Whitehaven to St. Bees extends a tract of level ground,
about five miles in length, which formerly must have been under salt
water, so as to have made an island of the high ground that stretches
between it and the Sea.

The WOODS consist chiefly of oak, ash, and birch, and here and there
Wych-elm, with underwood of hazel, the white and black thorn, and
hollies; in moist places alders and willows abound; and yews among the
rocks. Formerly the whole country must have been covered with wood to a
great height up the mountains; where native Scotch firs[53] must have
grown in great profusion, as they do in the northern part of Scotland to
this day. But not one of these old inhabitants has existed, perhaps, for
some hundreds of years; the beautiful traces, however, of the universal
sylvan[54] appearance the country formerly had, yet survive in the
native coppice-woods that have been protected by inclosures, and also in
the forest-trees and hollies, which, though disappearing fast, are yet
scattered both over the inclosed and uninclosed parts of the mountains.
The same is expressed by the beauty and intricacy with which the fields
and coppice woods are often intermingled: the plough of the first
settlers having followed naturally the veins of richer, dryer, or less
stony soil; and thus it has shaped out an intermixture of wood and lawn,
with a grace and wildness which it would have been impossible for the
hand of studied art to produce. Other trees have been introduced within
these last fifty years, such as beeches, larches, limes, &c. and
plantations of firs, seldom with advantage, and often with great injury
to the appearance of the country; but the sycamore (which I believe was
brought into this island from Germany, not more than two hundred years
ago) has long been the favourite of the cottagers; and, with the fir,
has been chosen to screen their dwellings: and is sometimes found in the
fields whither the winds or the waters may have carried its seeds.

[53] This species of fir is in character much superior to the American
which has usurped its place: Where the fir is planted for ornament, let
it be by all means of the aboriginal species, which can only be procured
from the Scotch nurseries.

[54] A squirrel (so I have heard the old people of Wytheburn say) might
have gone from their chapel to Keswi