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.
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