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procure a guide, candles, lanthorn, tinder-box, &c. for the
purpose of seeing Yordas-Cave, in the vale of Kingsdale, about
four miles off. By the advice of a friend, we took also with us a
basket of provisions, which we found afterwards were of real
service. When we had gone about a mile, we were entertained with
a fine cascade, called Thornton-force, near some slate quarries,
made by the river issuing out of Kingsdale. This cataract had
some features different to any we had yet seen among the lakes;
but which greatly conduced to render it peculiarly engaging. Part
of the river tumbled with impetuosity from the top of the stratum
of huge rocks, perpendicularly, about 20 yards: another part of
it, in search of a nearer and less violent course, had discovered
a subterranean passage, and gushed out of the side of the
precipice; when they immediately again united their streams in a
large, rounded, deep, and black bason at the bottom. From the
margin of this pool the view may be taken to greatest advantage:
the high rock on the south and opposite side about a half a dozen
yards higher than the cascade, and mantled with shrubs and ivy,
leaves nothing on that hand for the imagination to supply. If the
archetype was not in being, it might be thought the subterranean
stream was added to the picture, by the ingenuity of the artist,
in order to give a finishing stroke to the beauty of the scene.
This little river is worthy the company of the curious tourist
for about a mile along its course through a deep grotesque glen,
fortified on each side by steep or impending high rocks. About a
mile higher we came to the head of the river, which issues from
one fountain called Keld's-head, [1] to all appearance more
copious than St. Winifred's Well, in Flintshire; though there is
a broken, serpentine, irregular channel, extending to the top of
the vale, down which a large stream is poured from the mountains
in rainy weather. We now found ourselves in the midst of a small
valley, about three miles long, and somewhat more than half a
mile broad, the most extraordinary of any we had yet seen. It was
surrounded on all sides by
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