INGLEBOROUGH. 27 



the substance of Ingleborough, and on every side large cavities 

 swallow up the moisture collected about the summit. Purified 

 by trickling through the subterranean clefts of rocks, the water 

 issues from the clearest of fountains with a constant temperature, 

 often depositing on the surface the calcareous earth which it had 

 dissolved in its passage, and had refused to give up to the stalac- 

 tites which are always growing in the caverns. 



The easiest access to Ingleborough that most requiring to 

 be guarded by defenders of the summit is on the south side 

 by Crina Bottom. On this line, about a quarter of a mile west- 

 south-west of a farm called Yarlsber, on an open limestone 

 surface, is a small Camp of no great strength, perhaps held 

 as an outpost. In figure it is an irregular polygon, with a 

 peculiarity about the banks which deserves notice. The fossa is 

 irregular, but continuously traceable ; the bank interrupted at 

 two points in such a manner as to make two awkwardly covered 

 entrances not quite opposite. There is a natural mound of lime- 

 stone very near it on the west, round which marks of trenches 

 appear. The vallum is nowhere more than four feet above the 

 level of the fossa. There is no internal peculiarity, nor any 

 tumuli near to it. The average diameter is about 300 feet ; the 

 top of Ingleborough is visible from it. 



Ingleborough, on all sides girt with a rocky edge, is most 

 abrupt to the north and the west ; drier on the summit than 

 most of the Yorkshire fells ; and exposed in a remarkable degree 

 to violent ' north- westers/ How strange to find this command- 

 ing height encircled by a thick and strong wall, and within this 

 wall the unmistakeable foundations of ancient habitations ! When 

 resident many years since at Kirkby Lonsdale, it was for me an 

 easy morning's walk to the summit of Ingleborough ; and some 

 traces have always been in my memory, of some kind of wall 

 round it, mingled with incredible traditions of ' Roman camps ' 

 on the top. But in 1851 the Rev. Robert Cooke, looking on 

 this old wall, with a knowledge of similar structures in North 

 Wales, came to a conclusion which appears to me sound, that 



