Shortly after leaving Busy-gap, two narrow, but rather steep gaps are passed in quick succession, which do not seem to have obtained names. Through the first of these the BLACK DIKE has probably run. This is an earth-work of unknown antiquity, which is supposed to have stretched, in a nearly straight line, from the borders of Scotland near Peel-fell, through Northumberland and Durham, to the south of Yorkshire. The scantiness of the soil on the crags of the Wall, accounts for its not being discernible there, and the ground immediately to the north and south of it is boggy. In a plantation on the hill side, opposite to where we now are, looking south, the dike exists in excellent preservation. The _seuch_, or slack of it, may be seen even from the Wall, on the western edge of the plantation, which is called the ‘Black-dike planting.’ From the information of those who knew it half a century ago, I shall set down its probable course in this vicinity. Coming in a south-east direction, it passes the east end of Broomlee-lough; having cleared the Wall and Vallum, it goes by the west of Beggar-bog, the east of Low Morwood, through the Muckle-moss, and so to the Black-dike plantation. Passing afterwards a field called the Black-hall, it is last seen on the north bank of the Tyne near the Water-house. It re-appears on the south bank at Morley, and passing Tedcastle and Dean-row, is supposed to go by Allenheads into the county of Durham. In the best piece of it which I have seen, the ditch is ten feet across the top, and about five feet deep, reckoning from the top of the mound on its east side. Within the memory of my informants, it was much deeper. The sheep were often covered up in it in a snow-storm, as they naturally went there for shelter. The earth taken out of the ditch is uniformly thrown to the east side, where it forms an embankment. No stones, or such only as were derived from the cutting, have been used in its formation. The only conjecture hazarded respecting its origin is, that it formed the line of demarcation between the kingdoms of Northumbria and Cumbria; and certainly the course pursued by the Black-dike is very nearly similar to the boundary assigned to these regions in the most authentic maps of Saxon England. The antiquity of the cutting may be inferred from the circumstances, that for some distance it forms the division between the adjacent parishes of Haltwhistle and Warden, and that it passes through bogs which probably owe their origin to the devastations committed in the north of England by William the Norman.[99] The Black-dike is laid down in the map of Northumberland which was prepared to accompany Horsley’s Britannia, and in Kitchin’s Map of Northumberland, under the name of the ‘Scots’-dike.’