PARISH OF CROSBY RAVEKSWORTH. 399 



granite which lie like flocks of sheep upon the tui*f. Clouds, 

 themselves ag-low with the level rays of the setting sun^ threw 

 bread patches of shade upon the illumined ground, and made the 

 sunshine more vivid by the contrast. To the east was the broad 

 and heavy range of Cross Fell, fronted and broken by the three 

 sharp cones of Murton, Knocks and Dufton Pikes, and over which, 

 at its northern end, the far distant mountains of Cheviot were just 

 to be distinguished. Stretching down in the direction of the broad 

 valley of the Eden, and converging in the wooded hollow in which 

 lies the village of Crosby Ravensworth, the spire of its church just 

 peeping from out the trees, were the tributary valleys of Oddendale 

 and Crosby Gill. The former, with its grey stone walls and clumps 

 of trees, marking the site where the slated roof and curl of blue 

 smoke showed that some statesman had his home ; the latter, the 

 deep rocky gorge of the Lyvennet as it speeds from its sources on 

 the moor, its sides clothed with natural wood, the representative of 

 larger forests, where the ancient Briton had hunted the stag and 

 boar, and where in later days Sir Lancelot Threlkeld, a local magnate 

 of Tudor times, had his hunting-lodge. On the south, E-avenstone- 

 dale and Tebay Fells closed the view, deeply furrowed by precipitous 

 side-valleys winding far away into the bosom of the hills, and 

 coloured with green and purple and gold under the light and 

 shadow of sun and cloud. Westward over Shap, with its scattered 

 monoliths once forming an avenue and circle, and its ruined 

 abbey, alike companions in decay, the eye, overlooking the inter- 

 vening valleys of Wet Sleddale and Swindale, passed across the 

 great hollow in which lies Hawes Water to the flat-topped ridge 

 of High Street, relieved at one place by the sharp point of 

 Kidsty Pike. Further on to the north-west was Saddleback, 

 the ancient Blencathra, with Skiddaw just seen beyond it ; and 

 then Carrock Fell, and flatter land carrying the eye along almost 

 into Scotland. 



The cairn in question was 35 ft. in diameter, and now 2 ft. high. 

 At a distance of 9^ ft. south of the centre, and placed on the natural 

 surface, were the burnt remains of the bodies of an adult woman 

 and an infant — in all proba])ility a mother and child — enclosed in 

 an urn ^, which was too much decayed to admit of any description 



' Instances where the bnnit bodies of (presumably) a woman and an infant have 

 been placed together in the grave have occurred elsewhere ; I note two. At Port 

 Dafarcb, Anglesea, a large urn was found filled with burnt bones, and having a 

 smaller urn within it. The burnt bones were those of an adult about twentv-four 



