1 66* The Moors. 



romantic by the tumble and splash of mountain-streams. 

 This last-named feature renders the moors inviting in 

 the highest degree. Often among those vast and silent 

 wastes, all covered with knee-deep ling or whortleberry, 

 we come upon one tremendous ravine after another, the 

 sides rugged and wasted, and the narrow bottom filled 

 as if with the disintegrated and washed-away remains of 

 some great city. But down the rocky bed goes limpid 

 water, so beautiful in its everlasting rush, and gurgle, 

 and leap, and sweet side-pools, and little bays in which 

 snow-drifts seem to have sheltered, that we are almost 

 tempted to ask if flowers and green fields can compare 

 with this unsullied utterance of the mountains, and our 

 lotus-trees seem to grow, not in the woodland, but in 

 the wilderness. 



Amid these great hills are found, moreover, some of 

 the prettiest dingles of the neighbourhood. Like the 

 moorlands, they abound with perpetually running and 

 leaping waters, that give a charm to the walks in this 

 district such as we never discover in Cheshire, and make 

 them especially enjoyable after a visit to Rostherne 

 or Tabley, meres usually implying the almost total 

 absence of water in downward motion. To the botanist 

 they supply plants that cannot grow in the lowlands; 

 while the geologist finds records and remains such as 

 are met with on no other side of Manchester. Some of 

 these are strikingly wonderful. Whatever the origin in 

 chief degree of these valleys and ravines, it is clear that 



