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'Hardraw-scar is near the town of Hawes, in Wensleydale, and
bears some distant affinity to the tremendous Gordale (hereafter
taken notice of.) The chasm is pervious at the bottom, and
extends above three hundred yards in length, fortified with huge
scattered rocks on each side, which are in some places
thirty-three yards perpendicular, and the intervalum above
eighty. At the far end is an amazing cataract, which pours forth
a vast quantity of water, that falls into a deep bason. Behind
the water-fall is a deep recess, excavated out of the solid rock.
Here the spectator may stand behind the stream, secure from its
madifying effects, and may go quite round it, upon one of the
numerous saxa sedilia, at the distance of ten yards from the
water. In the year 1740, when fairs were held on the Thames, this
cascade was frozen, and constituted a prodigious icicle of a
conic form, thirty-two yards and three quarters in circumference,
which was also its height.'
After having determined to go to Settle, we had our doubt whether
we should proceed by Ling-gill, which is a curious and romantic
channel of a small river, having high and grotesque rocks on each
side; or take a more western direction on the other side of the
river Ribble, in order to see some other caves and chasms. Our
taste for curiosities of this sort induced us to adopt the latter
plan. We returned about a mile, before we left the turnpike-road,
and then turning off to the left, proceeding almost to the same
distance, we came to Alun or Alumn-pot, two or three furlongs
above the little village of Selside. It is a round steep hole in
the limestone rock, about eight or ten yards in diameter, and of
a tremendous depth, somewhat resembling Elden-hole, in
Derbyshire. We stood for some time on its margin, which is
fringed round with shrubs, in silent astonishment, not thinking
it safe to venture near enough to its brim to try if we could see
to its bottom. The profundity seemed vast and terrible, from the
continued hollow gingling noise excited by the stones we tumbled
into it. We plummed it to the depth of a hundred and sixty-five
feet, forty-three of which were in water, and this is an extra-
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