Travels in England in 1782 by Karl Philipp Moritz (most read books of all time .TXT) 📕

They reckon that they have in Derbyshire seven wonders of nature, of which this Elden Hole, the hill of Mam Tor, and the great cavern I have been at are the principal.

The remaining four wonders are Pool’s Hole, which has some resemblance to this that I have seen, as I am told, for I did not see it; next St. Anne’s Well, where there are two springs which rise close to each other, the one of which is boiling hot, the other as cold as ice; the next is Tide’s Well, not far from the town of that name through which I passed. It is a spring or well, which in general flows or runs underground imperceptibly, and then all at once rushes forth with a mighty rumbling or subterranean noise, which is said to have something musical in it, and overflows its banks; lastly Chatsworth, a palace or seat belonging to the Dukes of Devonshire, at the foot of a mountain whose summit is covered with eternal snow, and therefore always gives one the idea of winter, at the same time that the most delightful spring blooms at its foot. I can give you no further description of these latter wonders, as I only know them by the account given me by others. They were the subjects with which my guide, the shoemaker, entertained me during our walk.

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. Her husband, she said, would be happy to show them to me.

When I came to offer to pay her for my dinner she made some difficulty about it, because, as I had neither drank ale or brandy, by the selling of which she chiefly made her livelihood, she said she could not well make out my bill. On this I called for a mug of ale (which I did not drink) in order to enable me the better to settle her reckoning.

At this same time I saw my innkeeper of Tideswell, who, however, had not, like me, come on foot, but prancing proudly on horseback.

As I proceeded, and saw the hills rise before me, which were still fresh in my memory, having so recently become acquainted with them in my journey thither, I was just reading the passage in Milton relative to the creation, in which the Angel describes to Adam how the water subsided, and

“Immediately the mountains huge appear Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave Into the clouds, their tops ascend the sky.” Book VII., 1. 285.

It seemed to me, while reading this passage, as if everything around me were in the act of creating, and the mountains themselves appeared to emerge or rise, so animated was the scene.

I had felt something not very unlike this on my journey hither, as I was sitting opposite to a hill, whose top was covered with trees, and was reading in Milton the sublime description of the combat of the angels, where the fallen angels are made, with but little regard to chronology, to attack their antagonists with artillery and cannon, as if it had been a battle on earth of the present age. The better angels, however, defend themselves against their antagonists by each seizing on some hill by the tufts on its summit, tearing them up by the root, and thus bearing them in their hands to fling them at their enemy:

“—they ran, they flew, From their foundation loos’ning to and fro, They pluck’d the seated hills with all their load, Rocks, waters, woods, and by the shaggy tops Uplifting bore them in their hands—.” Book VI., 1. 642.

I seemed to fancy to myself that I actually saw an angel there standing and plucking up a hill before me and shaking it in the air.

When I came to the last village before I got to Matlock, as it was now evening and dark, I determined to spend the night there, and inquired for an inn, which, I was told, was at the end of the village; and so on I walked, and kept walking till near midnight before I found this same inn. The place seemed to have no end. On my journey to Castleton I must either not have passed through this village or not have noticed its length. Much tired, and not a little indisposed, I at length arrived at the inn, where I sat myself down by the fire in the kitchen, and asked for something to eat. As they told me I could not have a bed here, I replied I absolutely would not be driven away, for that if nothing better could be had I would sit all night by the fire. This I actually prepared to do, and laid my head on the table in order to sleep.

When the people in the kitchen thought that I was asleep, I heard them taking about me, and guessing who or what I might be. One woman alone seemed to take my part, and said, “I daresay he is a well-bred gentleman;” another scouted that notion, merely because, as she said, “I had come on foot;” and “depend on it,” said she, “he is some poor travelling creature!” My ears yet ring with the contemptuous tone with which she uttered, “poor travelling creature!” It seems to express all the wretchedness of one who neither has house nor home—a vagabond and outcast of society.

At last, when these unfeeling people saw that I was determined, at all events, to stay there all night, they gave me a bed, but not till I had long given up all hopes of getting one. And in the morning, when they asked me a shilling for it, I gave them half-a- crown, adding, with something of an air, that I would have no change. This I did, though perhaps foolishly, to show them that I was not quite “A POOR CREATURE.” And now they took leave of me with great civility and many