Northumberland is a county of generous limits as well as of character and distinction far above the common. For the entire space of its greatest length--which runs north and south, speaking freely, or from the Tweed to the Roman Wall and the South Tyne--a deep belt against its western frontier, spread the solitudes of Cheviot. Here, as in South Wales, is a vast watershed, covering a little matter of 700 or 800 square miles of silent mountain and moorland, not to reckon its overlap into Roxburgh and Cumberland, which, like the other, the outside world knows absolutely nothing about. Crossing the head waters of the South Tyne and the Eastern Derwent, which last divides Durham and Northumberland, the Cheviot range (not locally thus designated for the whole distance) merges at length into the Durham moors on the one hand and the Pennines on the other. A fine block of mountain solitude this, and, judged by our English standards, of really vast extent, as well as of worthy altitude; for the "Great Cheviot" on the north is 2700 feet, and Cross Fell on the Pennines, a range familiar in the distance, at any rate, to Lake tourists, is higher still. Humped up between the Irish Channel and the North Sea these highlands pour their waters copiously to the right and left through the intervening low country into either ocean. Eastward go the North and South Tyne, the Allen, the Wandsbeck, the Aln, the Coquet, and the Till, the last alone swerving northward, and, as every one who knows their Scott will remember, flowing by Flodden Field into the Tweed. Most of its farther waters flow westward into Scotland, save the Eden and the Irthling, while the Liddel at any rate touches Cumbrian soil. One may remember, too, that Northumberland owns the right bank of Tweed for its last 20 miles, and both banks at its mouth. But one turns to the Tyne instinctively--though Durham has claims upon one shore in its final uproarious stages--as the typical, as it is much the greatest, of Northumbrian rivers. One shrinks, however, amid such an atmosphere [Illustration: THE TYNE, HEXHAM, NORTHUMBERLAND] [Illustration]