composed of
limestone, forming bare hillsides honeycombed with underground waters
and pot-holes, which often lead down into the most astonishing caverns.
In Ingleborough itself there is Gaping Gill Hole, a vast fissure nearly
350 feet deep. It was only partially explored by M. Martel in 1895.
Ingleborough Cave penetrates into the mountain to a distance of nearly
1,000 yards, and is one of the best of these limestone caverns for its
stalactite formations. Guides take visitors from the village of Clapham
to the inmost recesses and chambers that branch out of the small
portion discovered in 1837.

In almost every direction there are opportunities for splendid mountain
walks, and if the tracks are followed the danger of hidden pot-holes is
comparatively small. From the summit of Ingleborough, and, indeed, from
most of the fells that reach 2,000 feet, there are magnificent views
across the brown fells, broken up with horizontal lines formed by the
bare rocky scars.

CHAPTER XIX

CONCERNING THE WOLDS

On wide uplands of chalk the air has a raciness, the sunlight a purity
and a sparkle, not to be found in lowlands. There may be no streams,
perhaps not even a pond; you may find few large trees, and scarcely any
parks; ruined abbeys and even castles may be conspicuously absent, and
yet the landscapes have a power of attracting and fascinating. This is
exactly the case with the Wolds of Yorkshire, and their characteristics
are not unlike the chalk hills of Sussex, or those great expanses of
windswept downs, where the weathered monoliths of Stonehenge have
resisted sun and storm for ages.

When we endeavour to analyse the power of attraction exerted by the
Wolds, we find it to exist in the sweeping outlines of the land with
scarcely a house to be seen for many miles, in the purity of the air
owing to the absence of smoke, in the brilliance of the sunlight due to
the whiteness of the roads and fields, and in the wonderful breezes
that for ever blow across pasture, stubble, and roots.

Above the eastern side of the valley, where the Derwent takes its deep
and sinuous course towards the alluvial lands, the chalk first makes
its appearance in the neighbourhood of Acklam, and farther north at
Wharram-le-Street, where picturesque hollows with precipitous sides
break up the edge of the cretaceous deposits. Eastwards the high
country, scarred here and there with gleaming chalk-pits, and netted
with roads of almost equal wh