button to main menu  Otley's Guide 1823 (8th edn 1849)

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Page 152:-
Yew Tree. Here it makes a considerable slip to the eastward, after which it ranges past the Tarns upon the hills above Borwick ground; and stretching through Skelwith, it crosses the head of Windermere near Low Wood Inn. Then passing above Dovenest and Skelgill, it traverses the vales of Troutbeck, Kentmere, and Long Sleddale; crossing the two intervening mountains in the direction of the roads which lead over them; so that no relation can be discovered between the direction of the vallies and that of the stratification. It dips to the south-east, while the cleavage of the slate with which it is associated frequently inclines in an opposite direction. After being broken and interrupted by the granite of Wasdale Crag, a fragment appears at Shap Wells.
Towards the south-east succeeds a series of rocks of the same dark-blue colour, and principally of a slaty structure, but accompanied in places with a rock which breaks in all directions. This last has supplied a great portion of the rounded stones found in the beds of the rivers Kent and Lune; furnishing materials for paving the streets, and repairing the roads in the vicinity.
A rock of fine-grained sienite is observed near the foot of Coniston Lake; and micaceous rock near the Birks, in Crosthwaite, Westmorland, presents good specimens of a natural process by which angular blocks can be reduced into rounded ones. The strata seams are more distinct in this than in the preceding division; but, like that, it is not marked by any natural partings in the plane of cleavage. A quarry one mile from Brathay, on the road towards Hawkshead, yields excellent flags for flooring; and they are manufactured into tombstones with good effect, by Mr. Webster, of Kendal, and Mr. Bromley, of Keswick. This quarry affords a good ex-
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