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page 45
several portions being marked out by stones, bushes, or
trees: which portions, where the custom has survived, to
this day are called dales, from the word
deylen, to distribute; but, while the valley was thus
lying open, enclosures seem to have taken place upon the
sides of the mountains; because the land there was not
intermixed, and was of little comparative value; and,
therefore, small opposition would be made to its being
appropriated by those to whose habitations it was
contiguous. Hence the singular appearance which the sides of
many of these mountains exhibit, intersected, as they are,
almost to the summit, with stone walls. When first erected,
these stone fences must have little disfigured the face of
the country; as part of the lines would every where be
hidden by the quantity of native wood then remaining; and
the lines would also be broken (as they still are) by the
rocks which interrupt and vary their course. In the meadows,
and in those parts of the lower grounds where the soil has
not been sufficiently drained, and could not afford a stable
foundation, there, when the increasing value of land, and
the inconvenience suffered from intermixed plots of ground
in common field, had induced each inhabitant to enclose his
own, they were compelled to make the fences of alders,
willows, and other trees. These, where the native wood had
disappeared, have frequently enriched the vallies with a
sylvan appearance; while the intricate intermixture of
property has given
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