62 SPORT. 



appearance of a landslip, formed by some of the 

 broken and pulverised debris of many a colossal crag, 

 whose granite foundations Time having besieged 

 ever since the Flood, has at length succeeded in 

 undermining, and which has then toppled over with a 

 report like a salvo of 10,000 8o-pounders, filling the 

 valley here two miles wide with a cloud of fine 

 dust resembling thick smoke, and yet, after scattering 

 huge splinters far and wide, has still retained sufficient 

 of its original and gigantic self to roll quietly through 

 the dwarf birch and sycamore wood at the bottom, 

 crushing flat and obliterating trees thick as a man's 

 body in girth, and leaving a gravel walk behind it 

 broad as a turnpike road, till it subsides into some 

 sequestered hollow, where, surrounded by trees no 

 taller than itself, it will reclothe itself with moss and 

 grow grey again for another 4,000 years or so. The 

 prevailing opinion among the peasants is that this 

 wall being very narrow, and its other side equally 

 precipitous, some day or other the whole precipice 

 will fall bodily into the valley ; and in this theory they 



