Landscape in History, and Other Essays

by Archibald Geikie

The evolution of the scenery of these islands has been a long-continued process, wherein the chief part has been played by the air, rain, rivers, frost, and the other superficial agencies which are continually at work in wearing down the surface of the land. Each different kind of rock has yielded in its own fashion to the agents of destruction. Those rocks which have offered least resistance have been worn down into hollows and plains. Those of a more durable nature have been left standing up as ridges, hills, or mountains. The composition of the rocks has likewise governed the nature of the soils and the distribution of vegetation. Chalk, for instance, forms long ridges of grassy and bushless down. Sandy and gravelly tracts are marked by heather and pine-trees. Volcanic rocks often rise into isolated crags with verdant slopes below. Granite lifts itself into mountains and rocky moorlands, with cliffs, corries and 'tors' and long trails of naked scree.

For the purposes of the present Lecture, I will arrange the scenery of this country in three leading types:

I.	Lowlands.
II.	Uplands.
III.	Highlands.

These types are not always separable from each other by any definite lines of boundary. The lowlands, for example, include ranges of hills, and here and there gradually rise into uplands, which in turn occasionally mount into lofty, rugged ground that may well be called highland. Moreover, each type presents a number of local varieties, dependent on geological structure. Thus the English lowlands differ in many respects from the Scottish, and both from the Irish.

The arrangement now proposed, though not strictly scientific, is for the proposed discussion convenient. We shall find, I think, that each of the three main types has had a perceptible influence on our literature, and not only so, but that even the local variations of each type have left their impress on our literary history. To treat the subject as fully as it deserves to be treated would require a course of lectures. I can only attempt to illustrate it by selecting a few instances from our poets where the relation that I wish to establish seems to be most readily perceptible.

I. The Lowlands of Britain. If a line be drawn across England from the mouth of the Humber through the Midlands to the Bristol Channel, it will divide the country into two sharply contrasted portions. To the west of it, the older, harder, and therefore more durable rocks rise into the high grounds of Wales, the Pennine Chain, and the Lakes. To the east of it, on the other hand, the younger, softer, and consequently more destructible, formations occupy the whole of the territory, giving a characteristic lowland topography to the districts that have been longest settled and cultivated, which include the greater portion of what is most familiar and typical in English landscape.

The eastern Lowlands of England consist of a succession of gently undulating ridges, separated from each other by winding vales or plains. These features have a general trend across the country from south-west or west to north-east or east—a direction determined by the successive outcrops of the different formations. But the denudation of the surface has been so great and so unequal that, despite the continuity and parallelism of the formations, their outcrops have been worn into endless diversities of topographical detail, producing abundant variety among the gentle profiles of the landscapes.

As examples of the ridges, we may take the North and South Downs, and the chain of heights that stretches from Wiltshire into Norfolk. The intervening plains may be illustrated by the Weald of Sussex, and by the lower basin of the Thames.

The differences between the successive geological formations of the English lowlands never pass a restricted limit in regard to composition and structure. Essentially soft and easily decomposable, the rocks include no thick bands of much harder material than the rest, such as might project in prominent features. The prevailing characteristic of the topography is therefore unbroken placidity. Nowhere does any ruggedness obtrude itself. No part of the ground towers abruptly above or sinks suddenly beneath the general level. The successive ranges of low hills have rounded summits and smooth slopes, which, even when steep, seldom allow naked rock to appear, but conceal it everywhere under a carpet of herbage. So gentle is the inclination of the ground, from the watersheds to the coast, that the drainage winds in sluggish streams that often hardly seem to flow. 'Purling brooks' are scarcely ever to be found. Since the running waters of the country have played no inconsiderable part in the inspiration of our poets, it is well worthy of remark that in the east and south-east of England the streams are, for the most part, silent. We shall see how strongly they are thus contrasted with the brooks that traverse the lowlands of the north.

Since the rocks of these eastern and southern districts decay into soils that are on the whole fertile, the surface, well watered by the rains from the western ocean, is clothed with meadows, corn-fields, and gardens, while trees have been planted along the roads and fields, and in abundant patches of coppice and woodland. The country thus wears a verdant park-like aspect, which at once impresses the eye of a stranger who comes here either from the European continent or from America. Undoubtedly cultivation has in the course of long centuries considerably altered the primeval landscapes; the progress of agriculture having gradually narrowed the area of the once predominant open heaths, while the ancient forests, formerly so abundant and extensive, have wellnigh vanished. There can be little doubt, however, that the general enclosed and cultivated character of the landscapes has, over much of the ground, remained nearly the same as now for hundreds of years.