SECTION III.

Cave Dale.---View from the Hills above.---Juvenile Beggars at Castleton. -Fluor Mines.---Odin Mine.---Mam Tor.---Winnats.--Speedwell Mine. ---Faujas St. Fond.---Mawe and Whitehurst.

PEAK'S HOLE is commonly the first object of those who visit Castleton, and they generally proceed immediately from one subterranean excursion to another. We however preferred traversing for a while the surface of terra firma, before we again "left the warm precincts of the cheerful day" to explore the gloomy recesses of Speedwell Mine: passing therefore through a part of the village between the church and Castle Hill, we entered a narrow dell called the CAVE, into which we were admitted through a rocky portal, about six feet wide. This deep ravine is closely hemmed in with rock on every side, and, with one solitary exception, neither shrub nor tree is to be seen within it. Rugged weather-beaten crags, with occasionally a stripe of thin mossy verdure inserted between, constitute the two sides of this dell, which in some places is from eighty to one hundred paces wide, and in others not more than twenty or thirty. About two-thirds up the dell, the view towards Castleton has a picturesque wildness about it that no other landscape in the same neighbourhood. possesses. The castle, seated on the extreme verge of a narrow ridge of rock, looks fearfully tremendous, borrowing importance from the situation it occupies, amongst rocks and precipices, that are thrown in confused masses around it. Near the village where the two sides of the dell

20

View from the Hills above Cave Dale.

approximate, a pleasing view is admitted of distant hills, whose shadowy summits and cultivated slopes give a character of loveliness to the remote parts of the scene. At the upper extremity of Cave Dale a contracted pass, similar in dimensions and appearance to the one by which we had entered, dismissed us into a more open valley. The path, though still slippery and rugged, became less precipitous as we proceeded, and we followed its windings until we attained the top of an extensive eminence, where we joined the carriage-road that leads from Castleton to Tideswell. Here we were richly rewarded for the toil we had sustained by one of the most delightful landscapes in any part of the Peak. We stood on an immense sweep of hill extending on our right beyond High-low to the river Derwent, where it meets that part of the East Moor called Millstone Edge, in the vicinity of Hathersage; from whence another chain of mountains of greater altitude is continued in a westerly direction, by Win-Hill, Lose-Hill, and Mam Tor; thence, turning to the south and south-east by the Winnats and Long-Cliff, the circuit terminates at the place where we stood, forming altogether a continued range of eighteen or twenty miles of lofty hills, within whose capacious circle lie the dales of Hathersage, Brough, Hope, and Castleton, rich in beauteous meadows, and adorned with woods and cottages and winding streams.

Following the road along the side of the hill to Castleton, we reentered the village nearly at the same point where we had left it: here again we were assailed by boys and girls, begging with unceasing clamour for halfpence, or whatever their importunity can obtain. This is one of the intolerable evils of Castleton: every visitor condemns the practice, which he contributes to perpetuate, by rewarding

Marine Impressions---Dr. Leigh's Theory.

21

the perseverance of the half-clad rogues by whom he is pestered. Here the child as soon as it can articulate is taught to beg; educated in the practice, all its actions and feelings are mendicant, and it begs mechanically through life without a sensation of either shame or meanness. Nothing but a determination not to give, can ever cure this degrading propensity.

We now took a short excursion along the new road to Mam Tor, intending to return down the Winnats to Speedwell Mine. This was a loitering ramble, as we were frequently detained by the road side, hunting for crystalized fluors and marine impressions. Here we found many specimens of shells, beautifully and distinctly marked. The limestone strata are full of them; and they are so perfectly and accurately formed, that one cannot but conclude that they once existed in another state. The correctness of Dr. Leigh's theory, "that these representations of creatures and their parts, and also the other modifications of matter, which are found in Poole's Hole and the mines of this country, are purely the wanton sportings or lusus naturæ of the fluor stalactites, caused by different mixtures of bituminous, saline, and terrene particles," will be disputed by nearly every man who visits Castleton and attentively examines the rocks and the marine impressions they contain.

Midway up the hill along whose base we were grovelling, are the mines of Tray-Cliff and Water-Hull---the subterraneous excavations where that elegant spar provincially called Blue John, is obtained. A long series of rugged steps, hewn in the Limestone Rock, leads to the principal of these caverns: here the fluor is found in detached pieces of from one to sixteen or eighteen inches thick; but large blocks of

this beautiful material are extremely rare. The cells of Tray-Cliff mine may be explored with but little inconvenience: their dimensions are various, and their sides and roofs are adorned with spars and stalactites, and as the light of the torch sports amongst them they shift their resplendent reflexions as rapidly as the corruscations of the northern sky.

ODIN MINE next attracted our attention: it is supposed to be the oldest in Derbyshire, and to have been worked by the Danes, as its name seems to import, nearly one thousand years ago. Its stock of ore is not yet exhausted, though the vein has been pursued with various success, through a lapse of many centuries. The entrance into this mine is at the base of the hill, within a few yards of the carriage-road. Its direction is nearly horizontal, and as it is tolerably spacious within, it is easy of access: its interior may therefore be visited with but little inconvenience, and the manager will be found to be an attentive and obliging man, ever ready to gratify the curiosity of strangers. A gently-declining shaft, nearly one mile in length, leads to the vein of ore that is now worked; which in some places is fifty or sixty yards below the level of the entrance, and in others nearly as much above it. The ore is of various thicknesses, from three or four inches to as many feet, and nearly one hundred people are employed in getting and preparing it for the smelting-mill. Many beautiful crystalizations of blende, barytes, fluor, calcareous spar, selenite, &c. &c. are found in this extensive mine, and occasionally that curious mineral called slikensides, whose mysterious properties were noticed in the first part of this work. Mr. Mawe, in his Mineralogy of Derbyshire, says, "I have seen a man when he came out of this mine only a few minutes after the explosion, who, regardless of danger, had pierced the sides of this sub