Whiteley Dean. 163 



Canal. The circumference, which is very irregular, 

 exceeds two miles. Rising high upon every side, the 

 encircling hills have a wild and rugged grandeur that 

 contrasts most agreeably with the smooth and tender 

 beauty of the environments of the meres of Cheshire, 

 from their summits, upon a sunny afternoon, the effects 

 are quite as pleasing as the average of those gathered 

 above Ullswater. An obelisk upon the highest point 

 marks Whiteley Dean, the view from which is wonder- 

 fully fine, reaching southwards to Manchester; while 

 beyond Littleborough, amid great piles of hills, stands 

 Brown Wardle, famous, like Bucton Castle, as an ancient 

 signal station. Amid them is a mamelon quite equal in 

 graceful outline to Shutlings Low, and decidedly taking 

 precedence of the more familiar one called Rivington 

 Pike, since the latter, when looked for at particular 

 angles, disappears; whereas the Brown Wardle mound 

 keeps fairly true to its outline from whatever point 

 observed, at all events upon the southern side. The 

 best view of it, so far as we know, is obtained from near 

 "Middleton Junction." As the word "mamelon" does 

 not occur in English dictionaries, it may be well to 

 say that it denotes a smooth, round, evenly-swelling 

 eminence, thrown up from amid hills already high, a 

 feature in mountain scenery greatly admired by the 

 ancient Greeks, who gave it a name of precisely similar 

 signification, as in the case of that classic one at Samos 

 which Callimachus connects so elegantly with the name 

 of the lady Parthenia. 



