8 BAKERS NORTH YORKSHIRE. 



millstone grit beds are buried beneath superincumbent deposits 

 of New Red Sandstone. From this main line of dislocation, 

 which is known by the name of the Pennine fault, two cross 

 lines strike out at right angles towards the east. The northern 

 one of these is about fifty miles in length, and is continued 

 from Brampton in Cumberland to the Northumbrian coast 

 near Cullercoats, relatively depressing the strata on the north 

 and elevating those on the south of it to an extent which cannot 

 be estimated at less than two thousand feet. The southern 

 line, or rather a double southern line, known as the great Craven 

 Fault, reaches about thirty miles, and may be distinctly traced 

 as far eastward as Wharfedale, in the same way relatively depres- 

 sing the strata on the south and elevating those on the north 

 of it from one to three thousand feet. 



It is along the line of the Pennine Fault and in the Craven 

 country about Settle that this lower mountain limestone is seen 

 to the best advantage. Here it forms a compact calcareous 

 mass about 400 feet in thickness, with very little or hardly any 

 interpolation of non-calcareous material, with numerous vertical 

 fissures, and in some places, as for instance on the south-eastern 

 sl-ope "of Ingleborough, it may be seen with its lower beds full 

 of broken slate boulders resting upon masses of dark-coloured 

 Silurian slate. The steep precipices which girdle Langstroth- 

 dale, Littondale, Gordale, Ribblesdale, Ingletondale, and Kings- 

 dale, and the thick mass of caverned and fissured limestone 

 that forms the general base of the well-known Craven hills, 

 Fountains Fell, Ingleborough, Penyghent, and Whernside, 

 must all be referred here. Along the western border of the 

 county it forms the lower part of the great Pennine escarpment, 

 still shewing fine limestone scars as far north as the country 

 round the head of the Tees. But as it passes towards the north, 

 both along the edge of this line and in the interior of the moor- 

 land mass, it loses the distinctly marked calcareous stamp which 

 characterises it in Craven, and the farther it goes in that direc- 

 tion, argillaceous and arenaceous bands are more and more 



