Which sounded as rain when we were near it, but which at a
distance seemed a sonorous, dull, and melancholy hum; and now again
we returned across the quiet streams through the capacious entrance
of the cavern to the little door, where we had before taken our
leave of daylight, which, after so long a darkness, we now again
hailed with joy.
Before my guide opened the door, he told me I should now have a view
of a sight that would surpass all the foregoing. I found that he
was in the right, for when he had only half opened the door, it
really seemed as if I was looking into Elysium.
The day seemed to be gradually breaking, and night and darkness to
have vanished. At a distance you again just saw the smoke of the
cottages, and then the cottages themselves; and as we ascended we
saw the boys still playing around the hewn trunk, till at length the
reddish purple stripes in the sky faintly appeared through the mouth
of the hole; yet, just as we came out, the sun was setting in the
west.
Thus had I spent nearly the whole afternoon till it was quite
evening in the cavern; and when I looked at myself, I was, as to my
dress, not much unlike my guide; my shoes scarcely hung to my feet,
they were so soft and so torn by walking so long on the damp sand,
and the hard pointed stones.
I paid no more than half-a-crown for seeing all that I had seen,
with a trifle to my guide; for it seems he does not get the half-
crown, but is obliged to account for it to his master, who lives
very comfortably on the revenue he derives from this cavern, and is
able to keep a man to show it to strangers.
When I came home I sent for a shoemaker. There was one who lived
just opposite; and he immediately came to examine my shoes. He told
me he could not sufficiently wonder at the badness of the work, for
they were shoes I had brought from Germany. Notwithstanding this,
he undertook, as he had no new ones ready, to mend them for me as
well as he could. This led me to make a very agreeable acquaintance
with this shoemaker; for when I expressed to him my admiration of
the cavern, it pleased him greatly that in so insignificant a place
as Castleton there should be anything which could inspire people
with astonishment, who came from such distant countries; and
thereupon offered to take a walk with me, to show me, at no great
distance, the famous mountain called Mam Tor, which is reckoned
among the things of most note in Derbyshire.
