A Day with the Field-Clubs. ±01 



and strength to venture up it. The heat of the sun had 

 dried up the scanty grass which covered its surface, and had 

 rendered it so slippery that it was almost impossible to stand 

 upright on the side of the mountain ; and it wa3 only after a 

 long struggle, and a combination of springing up and slipping 

 down, with an occasional moment of rest, by taking advantage 

 of some small, stunted hush of gorse, that the visitors, wean' 

 and exhausted, reached the summit. Like provident pilgrims, 

 most of them had contrived to carry some amount of refresh- 

 ments, which they here found exceedingly welcome, as they 

 gazed on the magnificent scene around. The top of Caer Cara- 

 doc forms a very uneven area, of no great extent, hut sur- 

 rounded by an ancient double entrenchment ; for what pur 

 it would be in vain to attempt to decide with our present 

 knowledge. Alany of our old antiquaries and historians, who 

 had evidently never seen it, set it down veiy absurdly as the 

 site of the last battle of the British hero, Caractaeus ; though its 

 position is anything but a convenient one for any kind of mili- 

 tary operations. It is more probably a burial-place, for we 

 know how much the primitive peoples loved to inter their dead on 

 the summits of lofty hills ; and, at a hasty view, there appeared 

 to be some traces of what may have been sepulchral tumuli. 

 The view from the top is, as we have just stated, grand and 

 varied; and those who, coming direct from Church Stretton, 

 had mounted earlier in the day, had been able to enjoy it with 

 a clear skv : but afterwards, as one of the results of the 

 extreme heat, the distance became more and more concealed 

 in a hazy mist. This was the case especially on the side to- 

 wards the north-west, where a clear distance was above all 

 things necessary to exhibit in its full beauty the vast panorama 

 presented by the vale of Shrewsbury and the country for an 

 apparently interminable distance beyond. Towards the east, 

 however, we could distinguish tolerably well through the mist 

 the long line of the Wenlock Edge, extending north and south 

 for nearly twenty miles, and appearing over it at intervt 

 second ridge, called the ridge of Aymestrey limestone. Between 

 them intervenes a valley worn in the soft shale, which lies be- 

 tween the TTenlock and Aymestrey limestone, by the action of 

 those mighty currents which once washed over the whole 

 on which we stood. Had there been no mist we should have 

 seen in the distance, behind the TTenlock and Aymestrey lines, 

 a third, composed of Old Eed Sandstone, and the view would 

 have been bounded in that direction by the two Clee Hills, 

 which are composed of mountain limestone and the coal mea- 

 sures. Towards the west the great mass of the Longmynd 

 presented itself, running parallel with the lines of hills just 

 mentioned; but, as stated before, a long line of c: fault" has 



