Page 188 - The snake's pass

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CHAPTEE X.
IN THE CLIFF FIELDS.
I went along the mountain- side until I came to the
great ridge of rocks which, as Dick had explained to me,
protected the lower end of Murdock's farm from the
westerly wind. I climbed to the top to get a view, and
then found that the ridge was continuous, running as
far as the Snake's Pass where I had first mounted it.
Here, however, I was not as then above the sea, for I
was opposite what they had called the Cliff Fields, and
a very strange and beautiful sight it was.
Some hundred and fifty feet below me was a plateau
of seven or eight acres in extent, and some two hundred
and fifty feet above the sea. It was sheltered on the
north by a high wall of rock like that I stood on, ser-
rated in the same way, as the strata ran in similar
layers. In the centre there rose a great rock with a
flat top some quarter of an acre in extent. The whole
plateau, save this one bare rock, was a mass of verdure.
It was watered by a small stream which fell through
a deep narrow cleft in the rocks, where the bog
drained itself from Murdock's present land. The