When we neared the top, encumbered
as we were with umbrellas, walking-sticks, and bags, we had to assist
each other from one elevation to another, one climbing up first and the
other handing the luggage to him, and we were very pleased when we
emerged on the moors above.
[Illustration: KILNSEY CRAGS.]
Here we found the beck running deeply and swiftly along a channel which
appeared to have been hewn out expressly for it, but on closer
inspection we found it quite a natural formation. We have been told
since by an unsentimental geologist that the structure is not difficult
to understand. As in the case of the Malham Cove stream, this one passed
into the rock and gradually ate out a hollow, while ultimately escaping
from the cliff as in the cove; but the roof of the cave collapsed,
forming the great chasm and revealing the stream as it leaped down from
one level to another. Looking about us on the top we saw lonely moors
without a house or a tree in sight, and 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.
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