STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 



CHAPTER I 



INACCESSIBLE VALLEYS — A STUDY IN PHYSICAL 

 GEOGRAPHY 



Most readers of that delightful story Lorna Doom must 

 have been interested in the curious valley occupied by the 

 Doone outlaws as an almost impregnable stronghold. It 

 is described as being about a mile long and a quarter of a 

 mile wide, the nearly-level bottom, through which ran a 

 mountain stream, being bounded on each side by a wall of 

 rock, eighty or a hundred feet high. At the two ex- 

 tremities, these walls approached each other, forming 

 narrow ravines, through which the little river entered and 

 escaped from the valley. At the lower end there was a 

 considerable fall or cataract, over a long steep slope of rock 

 bounded on each side by vertical cliffs, so that the only 

 entrance was up the steep and slippery rocks forming the 

 bed of the torrent, quite impracticable except to a good 

 barefooted climber. At the upper end there appears to 

 have been also some natural barrier, the stream being de- 

 scribed as running for a short distance underground ; but 

 rude rock-arches had been built over it, forming a kind of 

 tunnel entrance to the valley, which could be easily 

 guarded or blocked up altogether. 



If this description applied to any real locality we should 

 have, on a small scale, all the features which characterise 



VOL. I. 



