236 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



place, and fell down, leaving a high free-stone 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 unincumbered ; but would have been buried in heaps 

 of rubbish had the fragment parted and fallen forward. 

 About a 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 and her son, and his wife. These people in 

 the evening, which was very dark and tempestuous, 

 observed that the brick floors of their kitchens 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 earthquake, was ever felt ; only 

 that the wind continued to make a most tremendous 

 roaring in the woods and hangers. The miserable inhab- 

 itants, not daring to go to bed, remained in the utmost 

 solicitude and confusion, expecting every moment to be 

 buried under the ruins of their shattered edifices. When 

 daylight came they were at leisure to contemplate the 

 devastations of the night; they then found that a deep 



