RAMBLE OVER DERBYSHIRE HILLS AND DALES. 135 
looking rock, projecting over the road on the right, called the 
Toad’s Mouth, a large black mass of sandstone very much 
resembling that reptile, or like some antediluvian monster 
crawling down from the moor and becoming fossilized in ages 
past. It was at the Toad’s Mouth we left the unfenced road, and 
turning sharp to the right, struck out across the wild, free moor. 
“ Bearing up to the right, knee-deep in ling, bilberry wires, ferns, 
bents, and mossy stones, we came, in about another half-mile, to a 
place known even now by its old Saxon name of Caelswark, z.., 
the work of the Caels or Gaels—the earliest inhabitants of this 
island.* I cannot tell the precise extent of these stupendous 
masses ; but they occupy a lofty oval platform of perhaps two 
acres, and overlook a vast outstretch of country to the south of 
east. . . . . The platform presents its sublimest aspect to the 
east, where an enormous stone (is it in rude imitation of the ark ?) 
appears half launched into the sky from the top of a rocky pro- 
jection, and beneath which two wedges of gritstone seem just to 
sustain it in its perilous position. Along the southern side of the 
platform, and at its western end, portions of a massive wall, well- 
built, though without cement, yet remain, and it revives some 
curious associations, if we recall the attachment of the Druids to 
that tree when a stunted oak, probably, from its appearance the 
successor of one more powerful but now decayed, is seen,t waving 
its branches in this part of the ruins. . . . On the north and 
north-eastern sides it would seem that the vast piles of stone, most 
of them many tons in weight, had all been undermined, and 
plunged in one dread commotion deep into the valley beneath, 
where, lying one upon another, they now form a scene of desolation 
indescribable.” For this very reason I have used the above words 
of Dr. Hall, in his chapter on “ Caelswark and Hu-gaer,” the best 
chapter he has written in his Peak and the Plain. We were struck 
with astonishment and lost in awe and admiration. 
We had some difficulty in getting over a bog before we reached 
Caelswark, and the labour of walking through the stiff vegetation 
* See note in Zhe Religuary, Vol. I., p. 163, for further information. 
+t There were no signs of a tree when we were there. 
