During a tour such as ours one becomes impressed that a large proportion of Britain is in barren moorlands or broken hills suitable only for sheep grazing--an impression made all the stronger by the diminutive size of the country. We in America can better afford our vast tracts of waste land; we have fertile river valleys from which dozens of Englands might be carved; but it seems almost melancholy that at least a third of the Kingdom, no greater in size than an average American state, should be almost as irreclaimable as the Sahara. One does not so much note this waste in railway travel, for the steam roads usually follow the valleys and lowlands, always green and prosperous, and naturally seek out the more populous centers. But the wagon road climbed steep hills and wended its way into many retired sections where the steam engine cannot profitably go, and the motor car has opened to tourists a hitherto almost unexplored country. We were early away for Lakeland, and for miles and miles we traversed a rather inferior road through the moors and fells. Four or five miles out of Barnard Castle we passed through Bowes, a typical Yorkshire moorland town stretching some distance along the highroad. Though otherwise uninteresting enough, Bowes has one distinction of which it is far from proud, for here Charles Dickens found the school which served as the prototype of Dotheboys Hall in "Nicholas Nickleby." The building, altered into a tenement house and its evil reputation disguised under the more pleasing name of "The Villa," still stands at the western end of the town. In Dickens' day it was known as Shaw's School, and it seems that it deserved far less than many others of its class the overwhelming odium cast upon it in "Nicholas Nickleby"; and it is said that there still are people in Bowes who chafe at the injustice done their old-time townsman. But even if the Bowes school suffered some injustice, the purpose of Dickens was accomplished none the less in the reformation of the terrible juvenile workhouses which masqueraded as "schools." The moorland road carries us onward to Brough, a shabby, desolate town deep in the hills, with scarcely a touch of color to lighten its gray monotone. But this decayed village has its traditions; it was once famous through all England for its annual horse fair. They tell us that the fair is still held in Brough, though its fame has long since declined and it is now of only local interest.