ile from
the reservoir, we found Mrs Birst's mill, or rather a memorial of its
former existence, in a tall furnace-chimney, for literally no more
survives. The deposit of rubbish was here eight or ten feet deep, and
a number of workmen were engaged in excavating from it fragments of
machinery and other articles. They had cleared out the ground-rooms of
the house, though little more than the base of the walls remained. The
scene was precisely like an excavation at Herculaneum. The outline of
the rooms was beginning to be traceable. A grate and a fireplace
appeared. We observed a child's shoe taken out and laid aside--an
affecting image of the household desolation which had taken place. Mrs
Birst, however, and her whole family, had been fortunate enough to
escape with life, although with the loss of all their property. This
mill, from its nearness to the reservoir, as well as the
contractedness of the valley at the spot, had experienced the violence
of the flood in a degree of intensity unknown elsewhere.

The space between Mrs Birst's mill and the reservoir is for a good way
comparatively open, and here some good land had been completely
destroyed; but for two or three hundred yards below the reservoir the
valley is very narrow, and there some extraordinary effects are
observable. The flood, at its first outburst here, has exercised great
force upon the sides of the valley, carrying off from the cliffs
several huge blocks, which it has transported a good way down. Three
of from five to seven tons' weight are spoken of as carried half a
mile, and one of probably twenty tons is seen about a quarter of a
mile below the place whence it evidently has been torn. These are
prodigies to the rustic population, little accustomed to think of the
dynamics of water, and totally ignorant of the deduction made in such
circumstances from the specific gravity of any heavy mass carried by
it. Geologists, who have looked into the great question of erratic
blocks, are less apt to be startled by such phenomena.

Some of these gentlemen will, I suspect, find the transport of blocks
at Holmfirth less remarkable than they could have desired. It is well
known that, while most of them ascribe the travelling of boulders to
the working of ice in former times, one or two persist in thinking
that water may have done it all. The present president of the
Geological Society has endeavoured to shew, by mathematical reasonings
chiefly, that the blocks o