gO PEAK CAVERNS, DERBYSHIRE. 



two miles broad, and is calculated to be one thousand feet below the 

 level of the surrounding country. It has been much celebrated, not 

 because it is in that respect superior to many other valleys in Derbyshire, 

 but from the lovely contrasts it presents to the sterile, bleak and desolate 

 mountain tracts which surround it. The cavern itself is one of the most 

 magnificent and extraordinary works of nature. It is almost impossible 

 to conceive a scene more romantically beautiful, than the entrance to this 

 cave. On each side the huge grey rocks rise almost perpendicularly to 

 the height of nearly three hundred feet, having on the left the rivulet 

 which issues from the cavern, and foams along over crags and broken 

 limestone. The mouth of the cave is formed by a vast canopy of rock, 

 which assumes the form of a depressed arch, nearly regular in its structure, 

 and which extends in width one hundred and twenty feet, is forty-two 

 feet in height, and above ninety feet in receding depth. This gloomy 

 recess is inhabited by some poor people, who subsist by making pack- 

 thread, and by selling candles, and officiating as guides to visitors. Their 

 rude huts and twine-making machines produce a singular effect, in 

 combination with the natural features of the scene. After penetrating 

 about thirty yards into this recess, the roof becomes lower, and a gentle 

 descent conducts by a detached rock to the immediate entrance to the 

 interior, which is closed by a door kept locked by the guides. At this 

 point the light of day, which had gradually softened into the obscurity of 

 twilight, totally disappears, and torches are employed to illuminate the 

 further progress through the darkness of the cavern. The passage then 

 becomes low and confined, and the visitor is obliged to proceed twenty or 

 thirty yards in a stooping posture, when he comes to another spacious 

 opening, whence a path conducts to the margin of a small lake, called 

 " First water;" this lake is about fourteen yards long, and in depth three 

 or four feet: upon it is a small boat filled with straw, on which the 

 visitor lies, and is thus conveyed into the interior of the cavern under a 

 massive arch of rock, which is about five yards through, and in one 

 place descends to within eighteen or twenty inches of water. Beyond the 

 lake a spacious vacuity of two hundred and twenty feet in length, two 

 hundred feet broad, and in some parts one hundred and twenty high, 

 opens in the bosom of the rocks ; but the absence of light precludes the 

 spectator from seeing either the sides or the roof of this great cavern. 



It is traversed by a path consisting of steps cut in the sand, conducting 

 from the first to the " second water." Through this, visitors are 

 generally conveyed upon the backs of the guides. Near the termination 

 of this passage,' before arriving at the water, there is a projecting pile of 



