HOLLOW LANE. 



LETTER V. 



TO THE SAME. 



AMONG the singularities of this place the two rocky hollow lanes, 

 the one to Alton, and the other to the forest, deserve our attention. 

 These roads, running through the malm lands, are, by the traffic of 

 ages, and the fretting of water, worn down through the first stratum 

 of our freestone, and partly through the second ; so that they look 

 more like water-courses than roads ; and are bedded with naked rag 

 for furlongs together. In many places they are reduced sixteen or 

 eighteen feet beneath the level of the fields ; and after floods, and 

 in frosts, exhibit very grotesque and wild appearances, from the 

 tangled roots that are twisted among the strata, and from the 

 torrents rushing down their broken sides ; and especially when 

 those cascades are frozen into icicles, hanging in all the fanciful 



