The village of Malham is situated in a deep and verdant bottom,
defective only in wood, at the union of two narrow valleys, respectively
terminated at the distance of a mile by the Cove and Gordale. The first
of these is an immense crag of limestone, 286 feet high, stretched in
the shape of the segment of a large circle, across the whole valley, and
forming a termination at once so august and tremendous, that the
imagination can scarcely figure any form or scale of rock within the
bounds of probability that shall go beyond it. The approach to this
place, before the invention of machinery, was solitary and
characteristic. It is now polluted by one of those manufactories, of
which it would be trifling to complain as nuisances only in the eye of
taste. Yet there are streams sufficiently copious, and valleys
sufficiently deep, which man can neither mend nor spoil. These might be
abandoned to such deformed monsters without regret; but who that has
either taste or eyes can endure them, when combined with such scenery as
the environs of Malham, or the Banks of the Wharf.
Coarse complexions
And cheeks of every grain will serve to ply
The sampler, and to teaze the housewife’s wool;
What need a vermeil, tinctured lip for that,
Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn?
The approach to Gordale on the east side of the village, happily remains
what nature left it, a stony and desolate valley, without a single
object to divert the eye from the scene before it. This is a solid mass
of limestone, of perhaps equal height with the Cove, cleft asunder by
some great convulsion of nature, and opening its “ponderous and marble
jaws” on the right and left. The sensation of horror on approaching it
is increased by the projection of either side from its base, so that the
two connivant rocks, though considerably distant at the bottom, admit
only a narrow line of daylight from above. At the very entrance you turn
a little to the right, and are struck by a yawning mouth in the face of
the opposite crag, whence the torrent pent up beyond, suddenly forced a
passage, within the memory of man, which at every swell continues to
spout out one of the boldest and most beautiful cataracts that can be
conceived.
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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