walked across them until we came to a very rough road—­possibly the track which we expected to find leading from Malham.  Malham Tarn was not in sight, but we had learned that the water was about a mile in length and the only things to be seen there were two kinds of fish—­perch and trout—–­which often quarrelled and decimated each other.  The weather was dull, and we had encountered several showers on our way, passing between the Parson’s Pulpit to the left, rising quite 1,700 feet, and the Druid’s Altar to our right; but we afterwards learned that it was a poor specimen, and that there were much finer ones in existence, while the Parson’s Pulpit was described as “a place for the gods, where a man, with a knowledge of nature and a lover of the same, might find it vantage ground to speak or lecture on the wonders of God and nature.”

We were pleased to get off the moors before further showers came on, and before we reached Kilnsey, where this portion of the moors terminated abruptly in the Kilnsey Crags, we passed by a curious place called Dowker Bottom Cave, where some antiquarian discoveries had been made about fifteen years before our visit, excavations several feet below the lime-charged floor of the cave having revealed the fact that it had been used by cave-dwellers both before and after the time of the Romans:  there were also distinct traces of ancient burials.

The monks of Furness Abbey formerly owned about 6,000 acres of land in this neighbourhood, and a small vale here still bore the name of Fountains Dell; but the Scotch raiders often came down and robbed the monks of their fat sheep and cattle.  The valley now named Littondale was formerly known as Amerdale, and was immortalised as such by Wordsworth in his “White Doe of Rylstone”: 

  Unwooed, yet unforbidden. 
    The White Doe followed up the vale,
  Up to another cottage, hidden
    In the deep fork of Amerdale.

The road passes almost under Kilnsey Crag, but though it seemed so near, some visitors who were throwing stones at it did not succeed in hitting it.  We were a little more successful ourselves, but failed to hit the face of the rock itself, reminding us of our efforts to dislodge rooks near their nests on the tops of tall trees:  they simply watched the stones rising upwards, knowing that their force would be spent before either reaching their nests or themselves.  On arriving at Kilnsey, we called at the inn for refreshments, and were told that the ancient building we saw was Kilnsey Old Hall, where, if we had come earlier in the year, before the hay was put in the building, we could have seen some beautiful fresco-work over the inside of the barn doors!