, i 



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 

 ragior 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 shapes of frost-work. 



