While this man was showing me everything within his knowledge that
he thought most interesting, he often expressed his admiration on
thinking how much of the world I had already seen; and the idea
excited in him so lively a desire to travel, that I had much to do
to reason him out of it. He could not help talking of it the whole
evening, and again and again protested that, had he not got a wife
and child, he would set off in the morning at daybreak along with
me; for here in Castleton there is but little to be earned by the
hardest labour or even genius. Provisions are not cheap, and in
short, there is no scope for exertion. This honest man was not yet
thirty.
As we returned, he wished yet to show me the lead mines, but it was
too late. Yet, late as it was, he mended my shoes the same evening,
and I must do him the justice to add in a very masterly manner.
But I am sorry to tell you I have brought a cough from the cavern
that does not at all please me; indeed, it occasions me no little
pain, which makes me suppose that one must needs breathe a very
unwholesome damp air in this cavern. But then, were that the case,
I do not comprehend how my friend Charon should have held it out so
long and so well as he has.
This morning I was up very early in order to view the ruins, and to
climb a high hill alongside of them. The ruins are directly over
the mouth of the hole on the hill, which extends itself some
distance over the cavern beyond the ruins, and always widens, though
here in front it is so narrow that the building takes up the whole.
From the ruins all around there is nothing but steep rock, so that
there is no access to it but from the town, where a crooked path
from the foot of the hill is hewn in the rock, but is also
prodigiously steep.
The spot on which the ruins stand is now all overgrown with nettles
and thistles. Formerly, it is said, there was a bridge from this
mountain to the opposite one, of which one may yet discover some
traces, as in the vale which divides the two rocks we still find the
remains of some of the arches on which the bridge rested. This
vale, which lies at the back of the ruins and probably over the
cavern, is called the Cave's Way, and is one of the greatest
thoroughfares to the town. In the part at which, at some distance,
it begins to descend between these two mountains, its descent is so
gentle that one is not at all tired in going down it; but if you
should happen to miss the way between the two rocks and continue on
the heights, you are in great danger of falling from the rock, which
every moment becomes steeper and steeper.
The mountain on which the ruins stand is everywhere rocky. The one
on the left of it, which is separated by the vale, is perfectly
verdant and fertile, and on its summit the pasture hands are divided
by stones, piled up in the form of a wall. This green mountain is
at least three times as high as that on which the ruins stand.
I began to clamber up the green mountain, which is also pretty
steep; and when I had got more than half way up without having once
looked back, I was nearly in the same situation as the adventurer
who clambered up Mam Tor Hill, for when I looked round, I found my
eye had not been trained to view, unmoved, so prodigious a height.
Castleton with the surrounding country lay below me like a map, the
roofs of the houses seemed almost close to the ground, and the
mountain with the ruins itself seemed to be lying at my feet.
I grew giddy at the prospect, and it required all my reason to
convince me that I was in no danger, and that, at all events, I
could only scramble down the green turf in the same manner as I had
got up. At length I seemed to grow accustomed to this view till it
really gave me pleasure, and I now climbed quite to the summit and
walked over the meadows, and at length reached the way which
gradually descends between the two mountains.
At the top of the green mountain I met with some neat country girls,
who were milking their cows, and coming this same way with their
milk-pails on their heads.
This little rural party formed a beautiful group when some of them
with their milk-pails took shelter, as it began to rain, under a
part of the rock, beneath which they sat down on natural stone
benches, and there, with pastoral innocence and glee, talked and
laughed till the shower was over.
My way led me into the town, from whence I now write, and which I
intend leaving in order to begin my journey back to London, but I
think I shall not now pursue quite the same road.
CHAPTER XII.
Northampton.
When I took my leave of the honest shoemaker in Castleton, who would
have rejoiced to have accompanied me, I resolved to return, not by
Tideswell, but by Wardlow, which is nearer.
I there found but one single inn, and in it only a landlady, who
told me that her husband was at work in the lead mines, and that the
cavern at Castleton, and all that I had yet seen, was nothing to be
compared to these lead mines.
