nto
the gardens, where music is provided and there are nightly
illuminations. Millions of money have been expended in beautifying the
front of the cliffs adjoining the Spa, which is on the seashore, and to
which Scarborough owed its original fame as a watering-place. The
springs were discovered in 1620, and by the middle of the last century
had become fashionable, but the present ornamental Spa was erected only
about forty years ago. There is a broad esplanade in front. There are
two springs, one containing more salt, lime, and magnesia sulphates than
the other. In the season, this esplanade--in fact, the entire front of
the cliffs--is full of visitors, while before it are rows of little
boxes on wheels, the bathing-houses that are drawn into the water. The
surf is usually rather gentle, however, though the North Sea can knock
things about at a lively rate in a storm.

North of Scarborough the coast extends, a grand escarpment of cliffs and
headlands, past Robin Hood's Bay, with its rocky barriers, the North
Cheek and the South Cheek, to the little harbor of another
watering-place, Whitby. The cliffs here are more precipitous and the
situation even more picturesque than at Scarborough. The river Esk has
carved a deep glen in the Yorkshire moorland, and in this the town
nestles, climbing the steep banks on either side of the river. The ruins
of Whitby Abbey are located high up on the side of the ravine opposite
to the main part of the town, and they still present a noble if
dilapidated pile. The nave fell after a storm in the last century, and a
similar cause threw down the central tower in 1830. The choir and
northern transept are still standing, extremely beautiful Early English
work: only fragments of other portions of the abbey remain. This was in
olden times the Westminster of Northumbria, containing the tombs of
Eadwine and of Oswy, with kings and nobles grouped around them. It has
been over twelve hundred years since a religious house was founded at
Whitby, at first known as the White Homestead, an outgrowth of the
abbey, which was founded by Oswy and presided over by the sainted Hilda,
who chose the spot upon the lonely crags by the sea. The fame of Whitby
as a place of learning soon spread, and here lived the cowherd Caedmon,
the first English poet. The Danes sacked and burned it but after the
Norman Conquest, under the patronage of the Percies, the abbey grew in
wealth and fame. Fragments of the monastery yet r