)]

CHAPTER III

_The Vale of Pickering in the Lesser Ice Age_

Long before even the earliest players took up their parts in the great
Drama of Human Life which has been progressing for so long in this portion
of England, great changes came about in the aspect of the stage. These
transformations date from the period of Arctic cold, which caused ice of
enormous thickness to form over the whole of north-western Europe.

Throughout this momentous age in the history of Yorkshire, as far as we
can tell, the flaming sunsets that dyed the ice and snow with crimson were
reflected in no human eyes. In those far-off times, when the sun was
younger and his majesty more imposing than at the present day, we may
imagine a herd of reindeer or a solitary bear standing upon some
ice-covered height and staring wonderingly at the blood-red globe as it
neared the horizon. The tremendous silence that brooded over the face of
the land was seldom broken save by the roar of the torrents, the
reverberating boom of splitting ice, or the whistling and shrieking of the
wind.

The evidences in favour of this glacial period are too apparent to allow
of any contradiction; but although geologists agree as to its existence,
they do not find it easy to absolutely determine its date or its causes.

Croll's theory of the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit[1] as the chief
factor in the great changes of the Earth's climate has now been to a great
extent abandoned, and the approximate date of the Glacial Epoch of between
240,000 and 80,000 years ago is thus correspondingly discredited by many
geologists. Professor Kendall inclines to the belief that not more than
25,000 years have elapsed since the departure of the ice from Yorkshire,
the freshness of all the traces of glaciation being incompatible with a
long period of post-glacial time.

[Footnote 1: "Climate and Time." James Croll, 1889.]

The superficial alterations in the appearance of these parts of Yorkshire
were brought about by the huge glaciers which, at that time, choked up
most of the valleys and spread themselves over the watersheds of the land.

In the warmer seasons of the year, when the Arctic cold relaxed to some
extent, fierce torrents would rush down every available depression,
sweeping along great quantities of detritus and boulders sawn off and
carried sometimes for great distances by the slow-moving glaciers. The
grinding, tearing and cannonading of these streams cut out c