Over the Mendips. 67 



gradual, and the road winds down a remarkably serpentine 

 track. The rocks become higher on either side as we 

 descend, changing from mere stones to ponderous masses of 

 mountain limestone. The sloping shelves, up which at first 

 a man might climb, become more and more perpendicular, 

 until we are looking upwards at walls of picturesque crag, 

 rising to a sheer height of over four hundred feet. Deep 

 down in this romantic gorge we look upwards and discover 

 the sky above, like a mere strip of distant grey. The 

 Cheddar Pass should be approached as we approach it — 

 from the Bristol side, and not from the village — because the 

 scenery gets more imposing as you go down, and culminates 

 in a truly magnificent spectacle during the last quarter of a 

 mile. The faces of many of these rugged weather-seamed 

 rocks are adorned with aspiring ivy and with large trees, 

 shrubs, ferns, and grasses springing out of the fissures. The 

 rocks assume all manner of fantastic shapes — now a hoary 

 castle, now a temple of many spires, now a frowning fortress, 

 now a city set upon a hill. Mysterious caverns appear high 

 and low, and water silvers many a hollow. There is nothing 

 in England, at any rate, to compare in the slightest degree 

 with the grand rocks that stand, imposing sentinels, over this 

 comparatively little known pass in the Mendip Hills. 



At the stalactite cavern, which is the popular show-place 

 of Cheddar, a halt is sounded, and we explore the wonderful 

 interior, in which the son of the discoverer acts as cicerone. 

 The cave, as the reader doubtless knows, is one of the 

 finest in the kingdom, and abounds with that singular com- 

 bination of outlandish figures that belong naturally to stalag- 

 mite and stalactite formations. It is kept in perfect preser- 

 vation, and no man should claim to be a judge of British 

 caves who has not added Cheddar to his experience. The 

 guide-book is not far wrong when it says that the cavern, 

 though of small size, is quite a fairy world. 



