Wesley Corpus

Being at Osmotherley, seven miles from the cliffs, on Monday, June 1, and finding Edward Abbot there, I desired him, the next morning, to show me the way thither. I walked, crept, and climbed, round and over great part of the ruins. I could not perceive, by any sign, that there was ever any cavity in the rock at all; but one part of the solid stone is cleft from the rest, in a perpendicular line, and smooth, as if cut with instruments: nor is it barely thrown down, but split into many hundred pieces; some of which lie four or five hundred yards from the main rock. The ground nearest the cliffis not raised, but sunk considerably beneath the level: but at some distance it is raised in a ridge of eight or ten yards high, twelve or fifteen broad, and near a hundred long. Adjoining to this lies an oval piece of ground, thirty or forty yards in diameter, which has been removed, whole as it is, from beneath the cliff, without the least fissure, with all its load of rocks; some of which were as large as the hull ofasmall ship. Ata little distance is a second piece of ground, forty or fifty yards across, which has been also transplanted entire, with rocks of various sizes upon it, and a tree growing out of one of them. By the removal of one or both of these, I suppose the hollow near the cliff was made. All around them lay stones and rocks, great and small; some on the surface of the earth, some half sunk into it, some almost covered, in variety of positions. Between these the ground was cleft asunder in a thousand places: some of the apertures were nearly closed again; some gaping as at first. Between thirty and forty acres of land, as is commonly supposed, (though some reckon above sixty,) are in this condition. On the skirts of these, I observed, in abundance of places, the green turf (for it was pasture land) as it were pared off, two or three inches thick, and wrapped round like sheets of lead. A little further, it was not cleft or broken at all, but raised in ridges five or six foot long, exactly tesembling the graves in a church yard. Of these there is a vast number.