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due north for a full mile, and brought us to another large, standing, black and unfathomable water,

you like going at night to a club of very worthy, sensible men of this town, who are very civil to strangers, you may pass the evening in a very pleasing way; or if you have a taste for dancing, and prefer the conversation of a fine girl to a pipe and more serious discourse, there is a small polite assembly of as pretty women as ever gladdened the heart of man. My method, while there, was to smoke one night with the club; and the next I devoted to the ladies. We made up ten couple, and had the hemp-dressers one night, which is, you know, if you are a dancing reader, the most difficult, and laborious of all the country dances; and no where have I seen the ground more actively beat, or, in juster measure. Life and truth and charms were in perfection in those Richmond girls. I was there in 1729, 1737, and again in 1752, and the sensible club, and bright assembly, were still in being; but no more than three did I see, of men or women, in 37, that were there in 29; and in 52, they were all strangers to me. Some were married away; some had removed; and others were translated to the shades of eternity. This was to me a moral lesson. When I looked round the assembly room the last time I was there, and found every glorious girl of my acquaintance was gone, and that years had rendered me almost unfit to join with the ladies then present, in the dancings of the night, a philosophical sadness came powerfully

on the top of this high hill. There was no appearance of any feeders to supply this frightful

upon my mind, and I could not help sighing in the midst of harmony, and a blaze of charms. This life, I saw was a fleeting scene indeed.

And now, reader, as to Stanemore-country, if it should ever come into your head, to wander over this wild and romantic part of our world, at the hazard of your neck, and the danger of being starved, your route is, when you have passed the turnpike on Stanemore, in your way to Brugh, to turn off to the right, beyond the public-house, and ascend a fine rising valley you will see between two mountains, till you come to the top of the first hills then proceed, if you can, in the course I have described, and wherever it is in your power, tend to the north-east, for that is the way out. This is one way into the heart of Stanemore in Richmondshire, and will bring you, by the way, among the dreadful northern fells of Westmorland; a frightful country, and a fatiguing march.

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Another way to the Stanemore Alps, is behind JACK RAILTON'S, the quaker's house at Bows. Hire a guide from him, and his man will bring you as he did me once through a very surprising way of deep bottoms to a public house at Eggleston, on the border of RichmondStanemore. There rest that night, and early the next morning, proceed due north, when you can, with another guide, and you will come to mountains upon

lake, and therefore, and on account of its blackness, the surface must communicate with the abyss. From this water we rode due east for half an hour, and then descended to a sandy valley, where flames were rising from the ground. The fire came up without noise, smoke, or smell, and appeared to me very wonderful; but such things are common in many parts of the world. In the side of one of the Apennines, I have seen a large blazing vale. The learned tell us, this is owing to rich veins of bitumen, which crops in such places, and the heat of the air between the hills, in shallow vallies, causes it to burn. This

mountains, rapid rivers, and headlong torrents, that form amasing and tremendous scenes. Or, as this way is neither comfortable, nor very safe, it is a better road to the confines, or beginning of Stanemore, to ride from Gretabridge to Bernard Castle, and from BernardCastle to Eggleston, about sixteen miles, as I judge, for it is not measured, and then set out for the mountains from Eggleston, as before directed. I have been told there is another way into Stanemore, through Bishoprick; but as I am a stranger to it, I can only say what I have heard, that it is worse than the bottoms I went through from the quaker's house. This is enough, reader, to shew you how to get into Stanemore, if you have the curiosity and heart to visit that very wild and wonderful land.

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crop of bitumen, and accension by the agitation of hot air, is well fancied, I own but it does not give me full satisfaction. I think of this, and many other natural things, as Moyle does of the aurora borealis: that these uncommon appearances should be looked on with wonder and admiration, and raise in us a due reverence of their great Author, who has shewn his Almighty power and wisdom in forming such an infinite variety of productions in all parts of the universe. Philosophy undertakes to account for every thing. I am sure it is in many cases mistaken.

Having passed the burning valley, we rode through a river, that was up to the horses bellies, very rapid, and a bad bottom, and then proceeded along a steep hill side, the course N.W. till we came to a rich low land, that was covered with flowers and aromatic shrubs, and adorned with several clumps of oak, chesnut, and white walnut trees. This plain is about twenty five acres, surrounded with stony mountains, some of which are very high and steep, and from the top of one of the lowest of them, a cataract descends, like the fall of the river Niagara in Canada, or New France, in North America. Swifter than an arrow from a bow the rapid water comes headlong down in a fall of an hundred and forty feet, which is three feet more than the descent

of Niagara. The river here, to be sure, is not half so large as that which comes from the vast lakes of Canada, but it is a great and prodigious cadence of water, and tumbles perpendicularly in as surprising a manner, from as horrible a precipice; and in this very nearly resembles the Niagara-fall; that as you stand below, as near the fall as it is safe to go, you see the river come down a sloping mountain for a great way, as if it descended from the clouds. It is a grand and amazing scene. The water issues from a great lake on the top of a mountain that I found very hard to ascend, and the lake has many visible feeders from hills upon hills above it, which it is impossible to climb.

18 June. It was twelve o'clock by the time we arrived at this water-fall, and therefore I sat down by the side of it to dine, before I attempted to get up to the top of the precipice, and see from whence this water came. While my eyes were entertained with the descending scene, I feasted on a piece of venison pasty, and some fine ale, which, among other provisions, Mrs. Burcot had ordered her servants to put up for me but as I was thus happily engaged, my lad, O Fin, had climbed up to the top of the water-fall, and was going to land from a tree that grew out of the rocky mountain near the summit of the hill, when his foot slip'd, and he came

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