Many a time since then did Peter seek for the ravine but could never find it; but it is confidently assumed that Arthur and his knights are still slumbering under the Castle hill.
[The Doomed City.]
Through the valley of Wensleydale, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, flows the river Yore or Ure, passing onward to Boroughbridge, below which town it receives an insignificant affluent—the Ouse—when it assumes that name, under which appellation it washes the walls of York, and proceeds hence to unite with the Trent in forming the estuary of the Humber; but although it loses its name of Yore before reaching York, the capital city of the county is indebted to it for the name it bears. The river in passing through Wensleydale reflects on its surface some of the most romantic and charming landscape scenery of Yorkshire, and that is saying a great deal, for no other county can equal it in the variety, loveliness, and wild grandeur of its natural features.
"In this district, Wensleydale, otherwise Yorevale or Yorevalle," says Barker, "a variety of scenery exists, unsurpassed in beauty by any in England. Mountains clothed at their summits with purple heather, interspersed with huge crags, and at their bases with luxuriant herbage, bound the view on either hand. Down the valley's centre flows the winding Yore, one of the most serpentine rivers our island boasts—now boiling and foaming, in a narrow channel, over sheets of limestone—now forming cascades only equalled by the cataracts of the Nile—and anon spreading out into a broad, smooth stream, as calm and placid as a lowland lake. On the banks lie rich pastures, occasionally relieved, at the eastern extremity of the valley, by cornfields. There are several smaller dales branching out of Wensleydale—of which they may, indeed, be accounted part. Of these the principal are Bishopdale and Raydale, or Roedale—the valley of the Roe—which last contains Lake Semerwater, a sheet of water covering a hundred and five acres, and about forty-five feet deep. Besides this lake, the natural objects of interest in the district best known are Aysgarth Force, Hardraw-scaur, Mill Gill, and Leyburn Shall—the last a lofty natural terrace from which the eye may range from the Cleveland Hills at the mouth of the Tees to those bordering upon Westmoreland."
The valley is exceedingly rich in historic memories and noble monuments of the architectural past—"castles and halls inseparably united with English story, and abbeys whose names, whilst our national records shall be written, must for ever remain on the scroll; with fortresses which have been the palaces and prisons of kings. Of these, Bolton Castle, the home of the Scropes, and one of the prisons of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Middleham Castle, where dwelt the great Nevill, the king-maker, and the frequent and favourite residence of the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards King Richard III., and the venerable remains of Yorevale, or Jervaux, and of Coverham Abbeys, are alone sufficient to immortalise a district of country."
In former times the dale was covered by a dense forest, the home of countless herds of deer, wild boars, wolves, and other wild animals. There were no roads, but glades and trackways, intricate and winding, very difficult and puzzling to traverse, so that travellers often became benighted, without being able to find other shelter than that afforded by trees and bushes. At the village of Bainbridge there is still preserved the "forest horn," which was blown every night at ten o'clock from Holyrood to Shrovetide, to guide wanderers who had lost their way to shelter and safety from the prowling beasts of prey. A bell also was rung at Chantry, and a gun fired at Camhouse with the same object. In the first century of the Christian era there existed in the valley of Roedale a large and for that time splendid city, inhabited by the Brigantian Celts. It nestled in a deep hollow, surrounded by picturesque hills and uplands, and was environed by the majestic trees of the forest, where the Druids performed the mystical rites and ceremonials of their religion. The houses were built of mud and wattles, and thatched with straw or reeds, and the city was a mere assemblage of such private residences, without any of the public buildings, such as churches, chapels, town houses, assembly rooms, baths, or literary institutions, such as now-a-days appertain to every small market town; yet it was spoken of as a "magnificent city," and such it perhaps might be as compared with other and smaller towns and villages.
It was about the time when Flavius Vespasian annexed Britain to the Roman Empire, and the Brigantes had been partially subdued by Octavius Scapula, the Roman Governor of Britain, but before York had become Eboracum—the Altera Roma of Britain—and the influence of the conquerors of the world had not penetrated to this remote and secluded spot in the forest of Wensleydale, so that the people of the city still retained their old religion, customs, and habits of life; still stained their bodies with woad, clothed themselves with the skins of animals, and still fabricated their weapons and implements of bronze. Joseph of Arimathea had planted the cross on Glastonbury Hill, but the people of this city had never even heard of the new religion that had sprung up in Judea, and went on sacrificing human beings to their bloodthirsty god, cutting the sacred mistletoe from the oaks of their forest, and drawing the beaver from the water, emblematic of the salvation of Noah and his family at the deluge, of which they had a dim tradition.