144 DESCRIPTION OF THE STRATA. 



In a few instances, we meet here with longitudinal slips of th^ 

 strata on the coast, similar to those of Cayton, Cloughton, and Stain- 

 ton ; forming a higher and a lower cliff, with a long terrace between. 

 One example of this kind occurs at HolmsgrifF, between Sandsend 

 and Kettleness; another on the north side of the village of Runs- 

 wick. The village itself stands on a kind of terrace, or rather on a 

 series of terraces, on the side of the cliff; and it is not uncommon 

 to find in this romantic place, houses that have shrunk down with 

 the ground on which they stand. About 150 years ago, the whole 

 village then existing, with the exception of a single house, sunk down 

 in one night, the cliff giving way beneath it. The ground that sunk, 

 which probably consisted chiefly of alluvium, was to the south of the 

 present village.* 



Dislocations of another kind, wbicli must be nearly as ancient 

 as tbe rocks themselves, are frequently observed in the aluminous 

 strata, and the beds above them. Some of these breaks are very 

 trivial, consisting merely in the subsiden-ce of one part of the strata, 

 at a vertical fissure, a foot or two below the corresponding strata on 

 the opposite side of the fissure. Thus at a place below Sandsend alum 

 works, near Holmsgriff, we find on the scar a fracture of the schis- 

 tose beds, running out obliquely from the cliff, in the direction of 

 one set of the cross veins. It runs in two parallel lines, two or three 

 feet asunder ; and the surface of the bed on one side is a foot or more 

 below the surface on the other side; while the intermediate space, 

 between the two parallel lines, forms a sort of inclined plane con- 

 necting the higher surface with the lower. This intermediate part is 

 much disordered and shattered, the broken edges of the laminae of 

 the schist standing up on the higher side, giving evidence of the vio- 

 lent manner in which the dislocation has been effected. A little 



* For a more full account of this catastrophe, see Hist, of Whitby &c. II. p. 649. 



