Hardcastle Crags. 199 



as in its native habitats, every crevice that it creeps into 

 becoming a seam of phosphorescence. 



From Todmorden to Portsmouth, it is best to go by 

 rail. The return should be made on foot, as we then 

 see the majestic hills and beetling cliffs, especially that 

 wonderful rock that, peering over the crest of the moun- 

 tain, is so like an eagle about to spring from its eyrie, 

 that it is known as the Eagle's Crag. The trees, which 

 were mostly planted by Dr Whitaker,* between 1784 and 

 1799, (to the number of 422,000, on the entire estate,) 

 form a continuing spectacle of great beauty. Among 

 them are many which we perceive by their white pillars 

 to be birches. The form of the leaf of this most graceful 

 tree is rather variable, but generally speaking, it is well 

 marked enough for identification, even if we possess no 

 fragment of the silvery bark. (See next page.) 



Hardcastle Crags are reached by going five or six 

 miles further up the main line, when we reach Hebden 

 Bridge, distant from Manchester, like Portsmouth, about 

 twenty-four. Passing through the little town, and 

 ascending by steep defiles reckoned as "streets," in the 

 direction of Heptonstall a hamlet perched upon the very 

 summit of the hill the road to the Crags changes, when 



* Not the historian of Manchester, with whom this amiable man 

 has often been confounded, but Dr Thomas Dunham Whitaker, 

 the Vicar of Whalley, and subsequently of Blackburn. Dr John 

 Whitaker, the historian of Manchester, was Rector of Kuan Lany- 

 horne, in Cornwall, where he died in 1808. The Vicar of Black- 

 burn died in 1821. 



