what nature left it, a stony and desolate valley, without a single
object to divert the eye from the scene before it. This is a solid mass
of limestone, of perhaps equal height with the Cove, cleft asunder by
some great convulsion of nature, and opening its "ponderous and marble
jaws" on the right and left. The sensation of horror on approaching it
is increased by the projection of either side from its base, so that the
two connivant rocks, though considerably distant at the bottom, admit
only a narrow line of daylight from above. At the very entrance you turn
a little to the right, and are struck by a yawning mouth in the face of
the opposite crag, whence the torrent pent up beyond, suddenly forced a
passage, within the memory of man, which at every swell continues to
spout out one of the boldest and most beautiful cataracts that can be
conceived.

Wherever a cleft in the rock, or a lodgment of earth appears, the
yew-tree, indigenous in such situations, contrasts its deep and glossy
green with the pale grey of the limestone; but the goat, the old
adventurous inhabitant of situations, inaccessible to every other
quadruped, has been lately banished from the sides of Gordale. But the
wonders of this place are not confined to its surface. In mining for
lapis calaminaris, two caverns have been discovered near the Tarn, which
though of no easy access, will reward the enterprising visitant, not by
the amplitude of their dimensions, in which they are exceeded by several
in Craven, but by that rich and elaborate finishing which in the works
of nature, as well as of art, is always required to give an interest to
diminutive objects. The first of these resembles a small rotunda, not
more than six yards in diameter, and five or six in height, but clothed
with fleecy incrustations, from which depend stalactites of various
depth, and tinged with various hue, from the faintest yellow to saffron.
The lapidescent drops distilling from these through a long course of