170 
NATURAL HISTOEY OP SELBOENE. 
of the great ^oody hanger at Hawkley was torn from its place, and fell 
down, leaving a high free-stone cliff naked and bare, and resembling the 
steep side of a chalk-pit. It appears that this huge fragment, being 
perhaps sapped and undermined by waters, foundered, and was ingulfed, 
going down in a perpendicular direction ; for a gate which stood in the 
field, on the top of the hill, after sinking with its posts for thirty or 
forty feet, remained in so true and upright a position as to open and 
shut with great exactness, just as in its first situation. Several oaks 
also are still standing, and in a state of vegetation, after taking the 
same desperate leap. That great part of this prodigious mass was 
absorbed in some gulf below, is plain also from the inclining ground at 
the bottom of the hill, which is free and unincumbered ; but would 
have been buried in heaps of rubbish, had the fragment parted and 
fallen forward. About an hundred yards from the foot of this hanging 
coppice stood a cottage by the side of a lane ; and two hundred yards 
lower, on the other side of the lane, was a farm-house, in which lived a 
labourer and his family ; and, just by, a stout new barn. The cottage 
was inhabited by an old woman and her son, and his wife. These 
people in the evening, which was very dark and tempestuous, observed 
that the brick floors of their kitchens began to heave and part ; and 
that the walls seemed to open, and the roofs to crack : but ihej all 
agree that no tremor of the ground, indicating an earthquake, was 
ever felt ; only that the wind continued to make a most tremendous 
roaring in the woods and hangers. The miserable inhabitants, not 
daring to go to bed, remained in the utmost solicitude and confusion, 
expecting every moment to be buried under the ruins of their shattered 
edifices. When daylight came they were at leisure to contemplate the 
devastations of the night : they then found that a deep rift, or chasm, 
had opened under their houses, and torn them, as it were, in two ; and 
that one end of the barn had suffered in a similar manner ; that a pond 
near the cottage had undergone a strange reverse, becoming deep at 
the shallow end, and so vice versa ; that many large oaks were 
removed out of their perpendicular, some thrown down, and some 
fallen into the heads of neighbouring trees; and that a gate was 
thrust forward, with its hedge, full six feet, so as to require a new 
track to be made to it. From the foot of the cliff" the general course 
of the ground, which is pasture, inclines in a moderate descent for 
half a mile, and is interspersed with some hillocks, which were rifted, 
in every direction, as well "towards the great woody hanger, as from 
it. In the first pasture the deep clefts began ; and running across the 
lane, and under the buildings, made such vast shelves that the road 
was impassable for some time ; and so over to an arable field on the 
other side, which was strangely torn and disordered. The second 
pasture-field, being more soft and springy, was protrudid forward 
without many fissures in the turf, which was raised in long ridges 
resembling graves, lying at right angles to the motion. At the 
bottom of this enclosure the soil and turf rose many feet against the 
bodies of some oaks that obstructed their farther course, and terminated 
this awful commotion. 
The perpendicular height of the precipice in general is twenty-three 
