d in the rocky chasms of Henhole and Bazzle, the winter's snow often
lies until far into the summer. Down through the weird and fairy-haunted
cleft of Henhole, as we have seen, the little brown stream of Colledge
Water splashes its way, breaking into golden foam between mossy banks as
it reaches the outlet, and turns northward to join the Till.

This little burn is one of the prettiest of mountain streams; and in the
district surrounding it are perhaps more points of interest than any
other stream of such inconsiderable dimensions can show, saving only its
neighbour, the Till. The whole of the surrounding country, wild, lonely,
and romantic, teems with memories and reminders of the past. Sir Walter
Scott, while on the visit already referred to, found an additional
pleasure in the presence of so many relics of ancient days in the
neighbourhood. "Each hill," he wrote to a friend, "is crowned with a
tower, or camp, or cairn, and in no situation can you be near more
fields of battle."

Indeed, the whole district of the Cheviots, and the lower lines of
swelling hills into which the land subsides as it nears the sea, is
crowded with the memorials of an earlier race; from every hill-top and
rocky height they speak with tantalising half-revelations of that race
which the Romans found here when their galleys brought them to the land
which was to them Ultima Thule. No convincing explanation has yet been
found of the concentric circular markings, with radiating grooves from
the cup-shaped hollow in the middle, which are scored on the rocks
wherever traces of an ancient camp are found; and the numbers of these
traces are proof that this district was once a very thickly populated
part of Britain.

And when Angle and Saxon were driving the early inhabitants before them,
westward and southward, these hills and valleys still sheltered a
considerable population; and Bede tells us of a royal residence not far
away, at the foot of the well known Yeavering Bell, one of the more
important hills of the range. It rises to a height of more than 1,100
feet, and then abruptly ends in a wide, almost level top, grass-grown
and boulder-strewn, and crowned near the centre with a roughly-piled
cairn. The ancient name of Yeavering Bell, as given by Bede in his
account of the labours of St. Paulinus, was Ad-gefrin.

To recall the days when King Edwin and his queen, Ethelburga, came here
from the royal city of Bamburgh, we must go back to a time near