We had very little trouble in making this descent, because of the completeness of Mr. Birkbeck’s preparations; but we could fully realize what a dangerous feat the first explorers performed when they ventured into an unknown chasm, comparatively unprepared. The very name “Helln Pot,” = Ællan Pot, or Mouth of Hell, testifies to the awe with which the Angles looked down into its recesses.[31]
Such is the interior of one of those great natural laboratories in which water is wearing away the solid rock, either hollowing it into caves or cutting it into ravines. At the bottom of Helln Pot it was impossible not to realize, that the enormous chasm had been formed by the same action as that by which it was being deepened before our eyes. It was merely a portion of the vast cave into which it led, which had been deprived of its roof, and opened out to the light of heaven. The bridge was but a fragment of the roof which happened to fall upon the two ledges. The rounded masses of rock at the bottom are fragments that have fallen probably within comparatively modern times. The absence of stalactites and of stalagmites proves that the destructive action is rapidly going on.
The water-course at the bottom contained pebbles and boulders of limestone, and gritstone rounded by friction against one another and the rocky floor. The gritstone has probably been derived from the wreck of the boulder clay on the surface above the Helln Pot, and ultimately torn from the millstone grit of the higher hills in the district.
Caves and Pots at Weathercote.
Fig. 5.—Waterfall in Pot-hole at Weathercote.
On the north side of Ingleborough the series of caves and pots round the little Church of Chapel-en-le-Dale are especially worthy of attention. The chasm at Weathercote opens suddenly in the hill-side, and is perfectly accessible to visitors. You come suddenly upon a cleft a hundred feet deep, with its ledges covered with mosses, ferns, and brambles; at one end a body of water rushes from a cave, and under a great bridge of rock, and falls seventy-five feet, a mass of snow-white foam filling the bottom with spray ([Fig. 5]). The large masses of rock piled in wild confusion at the bottom, the dark shadows of the overhanging ledges, and the thick covering of green moss, to which the spray clings in tiny glittering drops, form a picture which cannot easily be forgotten. In the sunshine an almost circular rainbow is to be seen from the bottom. The stream passes from the bottom into a cave, and thence downwards to two large pots ([Fig. 6]), about two hundred yards away. In flood-time the channel has been known to become blocked up, and Weathercote has been filled to the brim. Usually after heavy rains the current is said to flow so violently into the first of the pot-holes, that it throws up stones at least thirty or forty feet from the bottom, with a peculiar rattling noise. From this strange phenomenon it is known as Jingle Pot, while the lower of the two is termed Hurtle Pot, because in flood-time the water whirls so fast round, that it is “hurtled” out at the top. The water flowing through Weathercote is derived from the little stream of Ellerbeck, which disappears in the limestone hills about a mile to the north, and runs at right angles to Dalebeck, or the stream flowing down to Ingleton, which it has been proved to join at a spot below Jingle Pot, by Mr. Metcalfe, who made his way down into it from the chasm of Weathercote.
Fig. 6.—Diagram of Subterranean Course of Dalebeck.
The course of Dalebeck, as you pass up the valley of Chapel-en-le-Dale, affords a striking instance of the dependence of scenery upon the nature of the rock. In its lower portion it has cut out for itself a deep ravine in the hard Silurian strata, in which you come upon the waterfalls, deep pools, and trees, that look as if they had been transported bodily from the district of Cader Idris, and inserted into the limestone scenery of the dales. The Silurian rocks are very much contorted, and on their waterworn edges lie the nearly horizontal limestone strata, in which the upper part of the valley has been scooped. As we rise the ravine opens into a valley ([Fig. 6]), along which the beck flows, until suddenly it is lost in a fissure, at a place called Godsbridge. Its subterranean course is marked, first of all, by a small depression known as Sandpot, and still higher by Hurtle Pot. It ultimately reappears at the surface, above Weathercote, and after passing through a picturesque cavern, known as the Gatekirk, its fountainhead is reached. The subterranean portions of its course are in the same right line as the open valley, and the pot-holes have been formed in the same manner as Helln Pot, by the passage of water at a time when the drainage found its way down the valley at a higher level than at present, very much as it does now in times of extraordinary floods.