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Gentleman's Magazine 1900 part 1 p.439
of scree slope into it, with here and there a tongue-like
benk of tawny grass. The little stream purls and rattles by
your side as you force your way over the yielding debris,
promising a rocky and picturesque source. Higher and higher
you struggle, and the water correspondingly shrinks in
volume. The fanlike streams of shale and dust have here
invaded the narrow dell, and you may hear the beck grumbling
and spouting beneath the feet. Further up the ground seems
to rise more abruptly, and your hopes rise, to be quickly
dashed, for the stream is now too weak to burrow a course
for itself. The moisture from a wide grassy basin percolates
through the dank green moss, trickles in thin lines down the
inequalities, or in wide glassy sheets slides - it cannt be
said to flow - among the steeper rock faces, accommodating
itself to all angles without a sound or a splash. And this
is the source of the stream you have so laboriously traced.
Another fine gully is entered from an old quarry. After
carefully negotiating a succession of dripping slabs, on
hands and knees, you reach the darkened bed of a chasm. On
the right the light is excluded by perpendicular rocks
crowned with a plantation of dark firs, on the left a less
abrupt slope, covered with dainty oak-fern and evil-smelling
"ramps," rises to a thicket of hazel, overtopped by ash
sapplings. A couple of these have fallen and form a living
bridge high above the stream. Climb carefull here and shun
the ferny slope, for the thin bed of leaf mould slides down
with the slightest pressure. A misty gleam in front shows
that the chasm widens, the noise of falling water proclaims
a cataract, and soon its trough is reached. The tiny stream
is descending in a succession of mossy steps, now close to
one bank, now to the other, wandering as it wills over the
wide face of rock. In winter, when the spongy fell is
thoroughly saturated, a huge volume crashes through this
defile. Then the gorge is impossible to scale, the trough is
a churn of angry yellow-brown waters, and the tiny tinkle
deepens to a majestic roar. Above the fall the water still
descends in picturesque cascades, at one moment rushing
pell-mell down a tiny crevice between smooth black rocks,
playfully diving into a deep black dub at another. In one
corner it divides round a green boulder on which a few
whisps of grass and a foxglove find sustenance; further up
it passes an abrupt ledge in a pretty spout. The merriment
of the brook seems to infect you, and you feel that you have
lost a companion when you reach its source in the
"Mere of the moorland
Boulder-environed."
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