THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

The mountains of Yorkshire’s North Riding lie like a wall of brass, and indeed, in one sense, they are a wall of brass; for it is the opinion of the most skilful and knowing people in the country, that those mountains are full of inexhaustible mines of copper, and so rich, as not only to be called brass, copper being convertible into brass, but also to have a quantity of gold in them too.

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Next here are the snake stones, of which nothing can be said but as one observes of them, to see how nature sports her self to amuse us, as if snakes could grow in those stones.  Then the glates or gargates, that is, in short Jett, a black smooth stone found in Cleveland; also a piece of ground, which, if the wild geese attempt to fly over, they fall down dead.

Defoe/Tour, 1724