The elevation increases as we advance, and by-and-by looking round on Filey, we see how it lies at the mouth of a broad vale which it requires no great effort of imagination to believe may have been an estuary at some very remote period, near to the time
"When the Indian Ocean did the wanton play Mingling its billows with the Balticke sea, And the whole earth was water."
And far as you can see inland the prospect is bare, even to the distant hills and wolds which loom large and mountainous through the hazy atmosphere.
Now the cliff shows bands of colour--brown, gray, and ochre, and the lower half capped by a green slope forms a thick projecting plinth to the perpendicular wall above. Scarborough begins to be visible in detail, and soon we descend into Gristhorp Bay, where rough walking awaits us. At its northern extremity stands an insulated columnar mass, somewhat resembling the Cheesewring, on a rude pedestal shaped by the waves from the rocky layers. Situate about fifty yards from the point, it marks the wear of the cliff from which it has been detached, while the confused waste of rocks left bare by the ebb suggests ages of destruction prior to the appearance of the stubborn column.
The cliffs are of imposing height, nearly three hundred feet: a formidable bulwark. It is heavy walking along their base, but as compensation there are strata within reach in which you may find exhaustless deposits of fossil plants, giant ferns, and others. And so the beach continues round Red Cliff into Cayton Bay, where another chaos of boulders will try your feet and ability to pick your way. To vary the route, I turned up at Cayton Mill, past the large reservoir from which Scarborough is supplied with water, along the edge of the undercliff to the high road, leaving Carnelian Bay unvisited. At the hill-top you come suddenly upon a wide and striking prospect--a great sweep of hilly country on one hand, on the other the irregular margin of the cliffs all the way to the town, and a blue promontory far beyond the castle bluff, which marks our course for the morrow.
The road is good and the crops look hopeful; but the hedgerows are scanty and stunted, and not improved by the presence of a few miserable oaks; nor do the plantations which shelter the farm-houses and stingy orchards appear able to rejoice though summer be come. In some places, for want of better, the banks are topped by a hedge of furze. On the left of the road, long offshoots from the bleak uplands of the interior terminate with an abrupt slope, presenting the appearance of artificial mounds. Another rise, and there is Scarborough in full view, crowding close to the shore of its bay, terminated by the castle rock, the most striking feature. Bright, showy houses scattered on the south and west indicate the approaches to the fashionable quarter, and of those farthest from the sea you will not fail to notice the _Cromwell Hotel_--a new building in Swiss-like style of architecture, at the foot of Oliver's Mount. The Mount--so named from a tradition that the Protector planted his cannon there when besieging the castle--is another of those truncated offshoots, six hundred feet in height, and the summit, which is easily accessible and much visited, commands an interesting prospect. You see the tree-tops in the deep valley which divides the New Town from the Old, and rearwards, broken ground sprinkled with wood, imparting some touches of beauty to the western outskirts.