FALL OF A CLIFF. 269 



the night between the 8th and 9th of that month, 

 a considerable part of the great woody hanger at 

 Hawkley was torn from its place, and fell down, 

 leaving a high freestone cliff naked and bare, 

 and resembling the steep side of a chalk pit. It 

 appears that this huge fragment, being perhaps 

 sapped and undermined by waters, foundered, 

 and was ingulfed, going down in a perpendicular 

 direction ; for a gate, which stood in the field on 

 the top of the hill, after sinking with its posts 

 for thirty or forty feet, remained in so true and 

 upright a position as to open and shut with great 

 exactness, just as in its first situation. Several 

 oaks also are still standing, and in a state of 

 vegetation, after taking the same desperate leap. 

 That great part of this prodigious mass was 

 absorbed in some gulf below is plain also from 

 the inclining ground at the bottom of the hill, 

 which is free and unencumbered, but would have 

 been buried in heaps of rubbish had the fragment 

 parted and fallen forward. About an hundred 

 yards from the foot of this hanging coppice stood 

 a cottage by the side of a lane ; and two hundred 

 yards lower, on the other side of the lane, was a 

 farm-house, in which lived a labourer and his 

 family ; and just by, a stout new barn. The 

 cottage was inhabited by an old woman, her 

 son, and his wife. These people, in the evening, 

 which was very dark and tempestuous, observed 

 that the brick floors of their kitchen began to 

 heave and part, and that the walls seemed to 

 open, and the roofs to crack ; but they all agree 

 that no tremor of the ground, indicating an earth- 

 quake, was ever felt, only that the wind continued 

 to make a most tremendous roaring in the woods 

 and hangers. The miserable inhabitants, not 

 daring to go to bed, remained in the utmost soli- 



