Wherever a cleft in the rock, or a lodgment of earth appears, the yew-tree, indigenous in such situations, contrasts its deep and glossy green with the pale grey of the limestone; but the goat, the old adventurous inhabitant of situations, inaccessible to every other quadruped, has been lately banished from the sides of Gordale.  But the wonders of this place are not confined to its surface.  In mining for lapis calaminaris, two caverns have been discovered near the Tarn, which though of no easy access, will reward the enterprising visitant, not by the amplitude of their dimensions, in which they are exceeded by several in Craven, but by that rich and elaborate finishing which in the works of nature, as well as of art, is always required to give an interest to diminutive objects.  The first of these resembles a small rotunda, not more than six yards in diameter, and five or six in height, but clothed with fleecy incrustations, from which depend stalactites of various depth, and tinged with various hue, from the faintest yellow to saffron.  The lapidescent drops distilling from these through a long course of ages, have gradually raised the floor of the cavern, so as to render it difficult to pass between the edges of the new surface and the circumference of the cavern.

Beyond is a second excavation about fourteen yards long:  ten in width, where broadest, and eight in height; proportions which an architect would have chosen.  At the highest extremity of this appears a recess formed entirely of petrified matter, around which the irregular projections of native rock are covered with an incrustation white as snow; and in many parts appear stalactites suspended from point to point, like light festoons of ice, which, if struck, return all the notes of musical glasses.  In the midst of this recess arises from a pedestal, clear almost as glass, an amber altar.  Beneath, but still in the roof of the cavern, is another circular excavation resembling an immense helmet, which seems to be lined with rich satin, and is fringed with rows of yellow stalactite about the edges.  Those who suffer their imaginations to wanton in the scenes of subterranean demonology, may here discover the cabinet of the “Swart Faery of the Mine,” while the sober geologist will find matter of rational and curious speculation; he will detect nature herself at work on a process uniformly advancing; so that by piercing the perpendicular depth of the incrustation on the floor of the first cavern, and by comparing with accuracy the additional laminae, which in a few years will be superinduced, he may ascertain with tolerable exactness, the period which has elapsed since those mighty convulsions by which these caverns have been produced.—­ Whitaker’s History of Craven.

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M. Chaptal