or the astonishing beauties of
Mulgrave Woods. Before I knew this part of Yorkshire, and had merely
read of the woods as a sight to be visited from Whitby, I was prepared
for something at least as hackneyed as Hayburn Wyke. I was prepared for
direction-boards and artificial helps to the charms of certain aspects
of the streams. I certainly never anticipated that I should one day sigh
for a direction-board in this forest.

It was on my second visit to the woods that I determined to find a
particularly dramatic portion of one of the streams. My first ramble had
been in summer. I had been with one who knew the paths well, but now it
was late autumn and I was alone. I explored the paths for hours, and
traversed long glades ablaze with red and gold. I peered down through
the yellow leaves to the rushing streams below, where I could see the
great moss-grown boulders choking the narrow channels. But this
particular spot had gone. I was almost in despair, when two labourers by
great luck happened to come along one of the tracks. With their help I
found the place I was searching for, and the result of the time spent
there is given in one of the illustrations to this chapter. Go where you
will in Yorkshire, you will find no more fascinating woodland scenery
than this. From the broken walls and towers of the old Norman castle the
views over the ravines on either hand--for the castle stands on a lofty
promontory in a sea of foliage--are entrancing; and after seeing the
astoundingly brilliant colours with which autumn paints these trees,
there is a tendency to find the ordinary woodland commonplace. The
narrowest and deepest gorge is hundreds of feet deep in the shale. East
Row Beck drops into this canyon in the form of a waterfall at the upper
end, and then almost disappears among the enormous rocks strewn along
its circumscribed course. The humid, hothouse atmosphere down here
encourages the growth of many of the rarer mosses, which entirely cover
all but the newly-fallen rocks.

We can leave the woods by a path leading near Lord Normanby's modern
castle, and come out on to the road close to Lythe Church, where a great
view of sea and land is spread out towards the south. The long curving
line of white marks the limits of the tide as far as the entrance to
Whitby Harbour. The abbey stands out in its loneliness as of yore, and
beyond it are the black-looking, precipitous cliffs ending at Saltwick
Nab. Lythe Church, standing in its