Origin of the Cheddar Cliffs. 31 



idea of its structure and extent from personal observations, 

 and to consider the most probable way in which it has been 

 formed. 



Immediately to the north-east of the village of Cheddar, 

 which stands on ground only a little elevated above high-water 

 mark, there is a combe- shaped valley. Its sides gradually 

 contract, and become more rocky and precipitous, until it 

 forms a narrow winding gorge, with walls of limestone. About 

 a quarter of a mile from the village the gorge becomes very 

 narrow, and the cliffs, especially on the right hand side, very 

 steep and even overhanging. For some distance beyond, the 

 road runs along what may be called the Strait of Cheddar, after 

 passing which the ravine gradually opens, and its sides become 

 more sloping, until it loses its rugged grandeur of outline. In 

 the most contracted part of the Strait the observer is so com- 

 pletely hemmed in by bare rocks as to require little to make him 

 fancy himself in a mountain solitude remote from the habita- 

 tions of mankind. When all is still in the neighbouring plain, 

 the wind here often blows violently, and is deflected from cliff 

 to cliff with a sound which, to the mind of a contemplative 

 geologist, might suggest the idea of audible spectres of stormy 

 billows which once may have followed the same course, as they 

 rebounded from side to side of a narrow inlet of the sea. 

 During the writer's first visit to this spot, numbers of rooks 

 were soaring from precipice to precipice, aud often appeared 

 like black dots against a narrow strip of sky ; while the resem- 

 blance to white ants presented by sheep browsing on ledges 

 near the top of the cliffs furnished a much more impressive idea 

 of their height than any process of measurement. 



Some of the old women, who importunately press their 

 services on the tourist as guides, will tell him that the Wind 

 Cliff is 480 feet high. This cliff (to which no drawing can do 

 justice) is certainly a most remarkable specimen of a literally 

 mural precipice of considerable breadth, and at least 300 feet 

 in height. It is quite perpendicular from top to bottom, ex- 

 cepting where it overhangs. It is a much finer and larger face 

 of rock than the cliff at the entrance to Groredale in Craven, 

 Yorkshire, and nearly twice the height of the rocky part of 

 the High Tor, near Matlock, in Derbyshire. As regards con- 

 tinuous perpendicularity, I believe it is not equalled by any 

 limestone cliff in the kingdom. Next to the Wind Cliff, the 

 so-called Cathedral Rocks are the most impressive. They con- 

 sist of several buttresses projecting forward from the main line 

 of cliffs. Their sides are perpendicular, and their fronts over- 

 hanging. The height of the summit of one of these rocks 

 above the level of the road at the bottom of the ravine has 

 lately been ascertained to be about 420 feet. The way in 



