We Took Our Seats With Him On The Outside Of The Coach, And Were Rolled Along Smoothly Through A Level

Country of farms and hedge-rows, and fields yellow with buttercups, until at the distance of seven miles we reached

Stockport, another populous manufacturing town lying in the smoke of its tall chimneys. At nearly the same distance beyond Stockport, the country began to swell into hills, divided by brooks and valleys, and the hedge-rows gave place to stone fences, which seamed the green region, bare of trees in every direction, separating it into innumerable little inclosures. A few miles further, brought us into that part of Derbyshire which is called the Peak, where the hills become mountains.

Among our fellow-passengers, was a powerfully made man, who had the appearance of being a commercial traveller, and was very communicative on the subject of the Peak, its caverns, its mines, and the old ruined castle of the Peverils, built, it is said, by one of the Norman invaders of England. He spoke in the Derbyshire dialect, with a strong provincial accent. When he was asked whether the castle was not the one spoken of by Scott, in his Peveril of the Peak, he replied,

"Scott? Scott? I dunna know him."

Chapel-en-le-Frith is a manufacturing village at the bottom of a narrow valley, clean-looking, but closely built upon narrow lanes; the houses are of stone, and have the same color as the highway. We were set down, with our Derbyshire friend, at the Prince's Arms, kept by John Clark, a jolly-looking man in knee-breeches, who claimed our fellow passenger as an old acquaintance. "I were at school with him," said he; "we are both Peakerels." John Clark, however, was the more learned man of the two, he knew something of Walter Scott; in the days when he was a coachman, he had driven the coach that brought him to the Peak, and knew that the ruined castle in the neighborhood was once the abode of Scott's Peveril of the Peak.

We procured here an odd vehicle called a car, with seats on the sides where the passengers sit facing each other, as in an omnibus, to take us to Edale, one of the valleys of Derbyshire. Our new acquaintance, who was about to proceed on foot to one of the neighboring villages, was persuaded to take a seat with us as far as his road was the same with ours. We climbed out of the valley up the bare green hills, and here our driver, who was from Cheshire, and whose mode of speaking English made him unintelligible to us, pointed to a house on a distant road, and made an attempt to communicate something which he appeared to think interesting. Our Derbyshire friend translated him.

"The water," said he, "that fall on one side of the roof of that 'ouse go into the 'Umber, and the water that fall on the other side go into the Mersey. Last winter that 'ouse were covered owre wi' snow, and they made a _h_archway to go in and out. We 'ad a _h_eighteen month's storm last winter."

By an "eighteen month's storm" we learned, on inquiry, that he meant eighteen weeks of continued cold weather, the last winter having been remarkable for its severity.

Our kind interpreter now left us, and took his way across the fields, down a path which led through a chasm between high tower-like rocks, called the Winnets, which etymoloists say is a corruption of Windgates, a name given to this mountain-pass from the currents of air which are always blowing through it. Turning out of the main road, we began to ascend a steep green declivity. To the right of us rose a peaked summit, the name of which our driver told us was Mam Tor. We left the vehicle and climbed to its top, where a wide and beautiful prospect was out-spread before us. To the north lay Edale, a deep and almost circular valley, surrounded by a wavy outline of pastoral hills, bare of trees, but clothed in living green to their summits, except on the northern side of the valley, where, half-way down, they were black with a thick growth of heath. At the bottom of the valley winded a little stream, with a fringe of trees, some of which on account of the lateness of the season were not yet in leaf, and near this stream were scattered, for the most part, the habitations. In another direction lay the valley of Hopedale, with its two villages, Hope and Castleton, its ancient castle of the Peverils seated on a rock over the entrance of the Peak Cavern, and its lead mines worked ever since the time of the Saxons, the Odin mines as they are called, the white cinders of which lay in heaps at their entrance. We left the driver to take our baggage to its destination, and pursued our way across the fields. Descending a little distance from the summit, we came upon what appeared to be an ancient trench, thickly overgrown with grass, which seemed to encircle the upper part of the hill. It was a Roman circumvallation. The grass was gemmed with wild pansies, yellow, "freaked with jet," and fragrant, some of which we gathered for a memorial of the spot.

In descending to the valley, we came upon a little rivulet among hazels and hollies and young oaks, as wild and merry as a mountain brook of our own country. Cowslips and wild hyacinths were in flower upon its banks, and blue violets as scentless as our own. We followed it until it fell into the larger stream, when we crossed a bridge and arrived at a white house, among trees just putting out their leaves with plots of flowers in the lawn before it. Here we received a cordial welcome from a hospitable and warmhearted Scotchman.

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