To trace the Wear upwards or downwards is like ascending or descending the stream of English history; from the busy present we move back into the feudal age, and at length into the quietude of primitive Nature. Primitive Nature holds her ground staunchly on Kilhope Law and the "Deadstones," and over other great bare tracks of rolling upland, near the meeting-point of the shires of Cumberland, Northumberland, and Durham, whence the Welhope, the Burnhope, the Rookhope, and a host of lesser moorland streamlets, bring down their waters to feed the infant Wear. In spite of the mining prospector and the railway projector, many of these fells and dales are more lonely to-day than they were three, or even ten centuries ago. Of the great tangle of lines that cover like a cobweb the lower valleys of the Tyne and Wear, only one or two outer filaments find their way into the neighbourhood of Upper Weardale, and all of them fail by many miles to reach the solitudes of Kilhope Moor. [Illustration: _Walker & Boutall sc._ THE COURSE OF THE WEAR.] The smoke of one of the great "workshops of England" may hang darkly upon the eastern horizon, but it is still too distant to pollute the pure air of the hills. Roads, indeed, cross these wildernesses of "ling" and peat-moss--west and east from Alston and Nenthead into Weardale; north and south, from the valleys of the Allen and Derwent to the Tees--through tracts that, in the early part of the century, were traversed only by bridle and footpaths; but these serve in a measure to concentrate any passing traffic, and to leave the open moors more lonely than before. The travelling chapman with his pack, the drover, and the gipsy, promise to become as extinct, as wanderers of the fells, as is the moss-trooper from the Debateable Land, or the pilgrim on the way to St. Cuthbert's shrine. Their occupants are the wild creatures of the hills and the flocks of black-faced sheep; with a sprinkling of shepherds, who preserve in their dialect and customs many relics of what Durham and the Wear were before the Coal Age. There are mining communities scattered up the valleys and along the hill-slopes; and at Burtreeford, a little above the bridge at Wearhead--the old rendezvous for the wrestling and other sports of Weardale Forest--is what is reported to be the richest vein of lead-ore in England. The lead-miners, like the other dalesmen, are in some ways a race apart, rough and unsophisticated, like the features of the district they occupy, but hearty, sincere, and full of sturdy independence of thought, and free from many of the vices which mark their class elsewhere. It is true now, as it was at the time of the "Raid of Rookhope," when the Tynedale reivers were seen pricking over the moss by Dryrig and Rookhope-head to harry the lands of the Bishopric, that "The Weardale men they have good hearts, And they are stiff as any tree." [Illustration: STANHOPE BRIDGE.] [Illustration: ROGERLEY.]