52 THE YORKSHIRE CAVES. 



the presence of the fall. The rocks are black, the place is 

 gloomy, the ferus, bushes, and trees meeting overhead, and im- 

 parting a strange beauty to the white rushing column of water. 

 Reaching the bottom, encircled by a swirling shower of spray, 

 where we could see the water swallowed up at once, and disap- 

 pearing in the heaps of pebbles on which it falls, some of the 

 more adventurous of the party got behind the fall, but had to 

 beat a speedy retreat, so blinding was the spray and so deafening 

 the roar of the descending torrent. We unfortunately missed 

 the rainbow effect, which is seen for about two hours in the 

 middle of the day, from the front of the fall. In heavy rains 

 the streams pour in from all the slopes around the Cave, at times 

 filling it to the brim and running over, when the water finds an 

 outlet in what must evidently have been its natural channel but 

 for the sudden leap underground. 



"We visited the Jingle Pot and Hurtle Pot, huge cavities in the 

 rocks, a little way down the valley, connected with the subter- 

 ranean stream from the Weathercote Cave. In times of flood 

 the Jingle Pot throws up with great violence masses of stone 

 and gravel at least thirty or forty feet from the bottom, accom- 

 panied by dismal gaspings and strange throbbing noises, and from 

 these curious phenomena its name is derived. In the still beauty 

 of an autumn day we of course heard nothing of all this, but in 

 the wilder throes and turmoils of nature we could easily conceive 

 that it must be grand to 



" See the giant crags, oh, ho ! 

 How they snort, and how they blow." 



The Hurtle Pot, so named because in floods the water whirls 

 so fast round that it ''hurtles" out at the top, is a gloomy cavity 

 overhung by trees, and mantled with ivy and ferns, and has at 

 the bottom a dark pool twenty-seven feet deep, which swallows 

 up rocks and stones, or whatever may be thrown into it, without 

 any perceptible diminution of its depth, and is said to be honoured 

 by being the haunt of a boggart or fairy ; but, peering into the 

 depths of the cavern, we could see only "darkness there, and 

 nothing more." Despite this failure to find anything of the 



