"Leaving that beautiful which always was,
And making that which was not."
After heavy and continuous rain, the overflow gives rise to musical waterfalls. Up in the glen called Deanwood there is also a natural and nearly permanent cascade.[35]
The eastern slopes of the Rivington range descend into the spacious valley which, beginning just outside Manchester, extends nearly to Agricola's Ribchester, and in the Roman times was a soldiers' thoroughfare. In this valley lie Turton, Darwen, and Blackburn. The hills, both right and left, again supply prospects of great extent, and are especially attractive through containing many fine recesses, sometimes as round as amphitheatres. Features of much the same kind pertain to the nearly parallel valley in which Summerseat nestles, with the pleasurable additions that come of care to preserve and to compensate in case of injury. By this route we may proceed, for variety, to Whalley, the Mecca of the local archæologist; thence on to Clitheroe, and to the foot of famous Pendle. At Whalley we find "Nab's Hill," to ascend which is pastime enough for a summer's evening. Inconsiderable in comparison with some of its neighbours, this favoured eminence gives testimony once again to the advantages conferred by situation and surroundings, when the rival claims consist in mere bulk and altitude. Lord Byron might have intended it in the immortal lines:
"Green and of mild declivity, the last,
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape."
Westwards, from the summit the eye ranges, as at Rivington, over a broad champaign, the fairest in the district, the turrets of princely Stonyhurst rising amid a green throng of oaks and beeches. In the north it rests upon the flanks of airy Longridge, the immediate scene accentuated by the ruined keep of the ancient castle of the De Lacys. On the right towers Pendle itself, most massive of English mountains, its "broad bare back" literally "upheaved into the sky"; and completing the harmonious picture,—since no landscape is perfect without water,—below runs the babbling Calder. Whalley Nab has been planted very liberally with trees. How easy it is for good taste to confer embellishment!
Pendle, the most distinguished and prominent feature in the physical geography of Mid-Lancashire, is not, like mountains in general, broken by vast defiles, but fashioned after the manner of the Dundry range in Somersetshire, presenting itself as a huge and almost uniform green mound, several miles in length, and with a nearly level sky-line. Dundry, however, is much less steep. The highest point is at the upper or north-east extremity, stated by the Ordnance Survey to be 1850 feet above the sea. The superficial extent is estimated at 15,000 statute acres, or about 25 square miles, including the great gorge upon the southern side called Ogden Clough—a broad, deep, and mysterious-looking hollow, which contributes not a little to the fine effect of this gigantic hill as seen from the Yorkshire side.