The mill had stood, for ages it may be, at the foot of a wild and steep cliff, forming the eastern extremity of the dreary range of Cliviger;[37] an elevated mountainous pass, from whence the waters descend both to the eastern and western seas. Upon those almost inaccessible crags the rock-eagle and falcon built their nests, unscared by the herdsmen, who in vain attempted their destruction. Through this pass, the very gorge of the English Apennines, the Calder,[38] a rapid and narrow torrent, brought an unfailing supply of grist to the ever-going hopper of Giles Dickisson. Not far from this happy abode, in the innermost part of the gorge, where the rocks of Lancashire and Yorkshire frown in close but harmless proximity, at an immense height,--the road and this narrow cleft only separating their barriers,--rises a crag of a singular shape, jutting far out from the almost perpendicular strata beneath. Its form is precisely that of a gigantic helmet, hammered out by the fanciful artist into the likeness of an eagle, its wings partly outstretched, and its beak--the point of the crag--overshadowing the grim head of some gaunt warrior. With but little aid from the imagination, the whole features may be discerned; hence it was denominated, "_The Eagle Crag_." But another appellation, more awful and mysterious, might be attached to it--a reminiscence of those "deeds without a name," which have rendered this district of Lancashire so fearfully notorious--"The witches' horse-block." The narrow pass we have described opens out into a succession of picturesque valleys, abounding in waterfalls of considerable depth and beauty, and expanding towards the north in tracts of fertile pasture-ground to the base of Pendle, well known as the reputed scene of those mysteries in which "the witches of Pendle" acted so conspicuous a part. Towards the close of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, the fame, or rather the infamy, of witchcraft, infested this once peaceful and sequestered district. The crag we have just noticed was, no doubt, to the apprehensions of the simple-hearted peasant, oft visited by the unhallowed feet of weirds and witches pluming themselves for flight to the great rendezvous at Malkin Tower, by the side of "the mighty Pendle." [Illustration: EAGLE CRAG, VALE OF TODMORDEN. _Drawn by G. Pickering. Engraved by Edw^d Finden._]