156 Country Rambles. 



the foot of which stands the one solitary tree of this 

 grand wilderness a mountain-ash, the tree of all others 

 accustomed to loneliness. Above, at a vast height, is 

 Ravenstone Brow, so named from the number of birds 

 that once nested thereabouts, and where cuckoos still 

 come. When at length we arrive at Seal Bark, who 

 shall mistake it ? All the waste and broken rock of a 

 kingdom seems to have been pitched over the brow, 

 and let fall and roll or stop just where it liked. The 

 probability is that at some remote period the torrent 

 undermined one side of the gorge, the ruins toppling 

 over much in the same way as those of the ancient 

 Clevedon shore, where it is plain that the fragments owe 

 their present position to the remorseless beating of the 

 sea. 



For those who care to run on through the great Stand- 

 edge tunnel, three miles and sixty-four yards long, thus 

 getting to Marsden, there is an extremely fine mountain- 

 pass called Wessenden Clough, the heights on either 

 hand not less than a thousand feet, and once again a 

 rushing torrent. There is a path back to Greenfield 

 over the moors, but the way is rather long, except for 

 the practised. The great tunnel at Woodhead, upon the 

 Sheffield line, often thought to exceed the Standedge, is, 

 we may here remark, twenty yards shorter. 



