114 THE OTTER. 



visited only by an occasional shepherd", and answer- 

 ing no more useful purpose than to shelter the horned 

 mountain-sheep from the upland gales, and to afford 

 roosting-places for countless thousands of starlings. 

 The birds arrive in flocks about dusk, filling the 

 air with their strange call-notes and chatterings, 

 and alighting among the ruins till every turret and 

 pinnacle is black with them. 



There is a spirit of romance about these long- 

 abandoned sites, for each has its strange history 

 known only to the oldest village-folk. Many of 

 them had their own reservoirs, designed to feed 

 underground canals by which the ore was earned 

 out deep in the valleys, and to supply water for 

 the great washing-floors, which are still intact. In 

 the Bolton Abbey vicinity the bursting of one of 

 these dams one rainy night led to the inundation 

 of an entire mine, and to-day a few masses of water- 

 washed masonry lying in a quiet glen are all that 

 remain of a tragedy about which the outer world 

 never heard men, women, and children being 

 drowned in their sleep by the sudden assault of a 

 mighty wall of water. In other localities feuds of 

 considerable bitterness arose between the imported 

 miners and the dalesmen, free fights occurring 

 everywhere ; and in one instance, in order to avenge 

 an imagined grievance, the miners stealthily raided 

 a village by night and stole the May-pole ! 



But though tradition lives on, the mines are 

 fast fading into the blue level of the landscapes, 

 and only the vast underground workings remain 

 intact. In many cases the mine -workings tap 

 natural corridors running for miles under the 

 moors, a labyrinth of underground rivers and 

 waterways, which in turn tap the ravines and 

 canons, thus laying open for the convenience of 



