Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume I.djvu/177

 arable spots for oats) are applied to the feeding of cattle, paying is. per head per week. But the lord seems to be the only person benefited by the property, the poverty of which is unequal to two profits; screwed up to the highest pitch of rent, the miserable tenant, with all his vigilance and exertion, finds himself unable to do more than procure the bare necessaries of life, after having paid his unconscionable rent, and satisfied the demands of taxation and parochial assessment.

Arrived now amongst the mountains of Derbyshire, we journeyed on, with nothing to delight the eye or awaken the fancy, to Castleton, which we approached by a steep descent called the Winnats, or Wind-gates, from the stream of air that always sweeps through the chasm. This road is a mile in length, and carried on in a winding direction, in order to render the natural declivity of the ground passable by carriages. Happy was the imagination that first suggested its name, the gates or portals of the winds; since, wild as these sons of the tempest are, the massive rocks which Nature here presents, seem to promise a barrier sufficiently strong to controul their maddest fury. Precipices one thousand feet in height, dark, rugged, and perpendicular, heave their unwieldy forms on each side of the road, (which makes several inflexions in its