Z GEOLOaiOAT, EXCUnSION, 



grand district without bringing back with him^ besides health, many an 

 addition to his store of knowledge. 



Our starting-point was Richmond; leaving which we followed the course 

 of the Swale nearly to its source, then crossed the Buttertubs Pass to 

 llawes, thence, ascending Weddale, we crossed the fells to Ingleton and 

 Clapham, and ascended Inglebro; from Clapham turning eastward, we passed 

 across Ribblesdale, and, by the wild moors at the back of Fountains Fell, 

 returned to Settle; thence to Clitheroe and Whitewell, on the Hodder, and 

 through the Lough of Bolland, to Lancaster. 



A description of the character of Swaledale will fully suffice for that of 

 Wensleydale and their branch valleys. Its bed is formed of the IVIiddle 

 Limestone, called by Phillips the Yoredale Rocks; it is narrow, being not 

 more than a quarter to half a mile in breadth, (Wensleydale is broader.) 

 It is abundantly wooded with fine ash, small elm and oak, and a great deal 

 of planted larch; and as its bed rises gradually from the river to the pre- 

 cipitous cliSs of the Upper Limestone, these woods become much thicker, 

 lining the whole side of the valley where the scars are not too steep; 

 and where they are steep they cover with a luxuriant underwood the talus 

 of rocks heaped in wild confusion at their base, and nestled in the rugged 

 fissures of their broken sides, which are covered by clinging masses of 

 ivy, and tinted by the lichens and mosses growing on their weather-worn 

 surface. On the top of the scars the moors commence stretching away 

 for miles m heathy swells, often very boggy; these rounded eminences are 

 formed by the action of the weather crumbling the millstone grit beds. 



The vegetation of these valleys is peculiarly rich, and both below and 

 above the clifis they afford a fine field for the botanist. As they rise towards 

 the sources of the streams which twist through them, they become much 

 narrower, and their sides become higher without being so precipitous; for 

 as the rise of the valleys is greater than the inclination of the beds forming 

 them, in following their course upwards they are found to rise above the 

 upper scar limestone which then forms the bottom instead of the sides of 

 the valleys, and over the edge of which these streams often leap in cas- 

 cades of great beauty. The woods gradually cease above these falls, but the 

 land on both sides of the stream produces rich grass, hence the staple of 

 these dales is cheese; (what Yorkshireman has not heard of Wensleydale 

 and Cotherstone?) Still higher, the valleys become very narrow, till they 

 end in deep ravines in the moors, where a little stream of dark purple 

 water trickles in dry weather from the bog above, which a rainy morning 

 will transform into a wet spongy mass, and the stream into a sweeping 

 torrent. 



A traveller will find that a combination of riding and walking is pre- 

 ferable to a fixed adherence to one fixed mode of progression; riding gen- 



