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broomsticks and their cauldrons, they would not have been unlike Shakespeare's witches; and this fanciful idea gained strength from the barbarous sounds they uttered, the gloomy haziness of the morning, and the yawning mouth of the cavern. However we determined to explore this recess, and, accordingly, having some of these beauties at the head and in the rear, we entered! Every part of this wonderful place is crowded with petrifactions. Having taken its name from one Poole, a robber, noted for his depredations, who here secreted himself, our guides shewed certain romantic figures, which they say were used by him for various purposes. His kitchen, parlour, stable, bed, and even closet, are pointed out with a boasted accuracy. Cotton, who in 1681, described the Wonders of the Peak in Hudibrastic verse, notices the circumstance in the following curious manner:

In this infernal mansion you must see,

Where Master Poole and his bold yeomanry
Took up their dark apartment; for they here
Do shew his hall, parlour, and bed-chamber,
With drawing-room and closet, and with these
His kitchen and his other offices;

And all contriv'd to justify a fable,

Which no man will believe but the silly rabble !

The other petrifactions, which have assumed imaginary configurations, are the sea turtle-tripe -constant drop-flitch of bacon-sheep-lionlaundress' table,-the bee hive-the horse-organ pipes, and Mary Queen of Scots' pillar. These I took down with my pencil on the spot, and there

fore you may depend on the enumeration. Beyond the pillar the opening of the rock terminates in a point, in which a candle being placed, it has the brilliancy of a star, in the firmament! In our return we came out under the passage by which we were led into the cavern. The water, used by persons living just by, is fetched out of this place. Whilst we were inspecting the hole, several were occupied in this employment; we looked down upon them from the side of a rock, whither we had clambered: the dimness of their light gave them the appearance of apparitions, whilst their singing, mingled with noises arising from their tin jugs swinging against the crags, made a fearful reverberation! Upon gaining the entrance of the cave, these aged beauties crowded round with basons of water that we might wash our hands; for we were bebaubed with the slime of this dungeon. It is about half a mile under the earth, and we were glad once more to emerge into day-light and liberty.*

On our return to breakfast our appetites were keen, and we relished our fare and our company. It was our wish to reach Castleton, distant fourteen miles, where we should have seen the Devil's Cave, which is reckoned the capital of the Peak's wonders; but our time would not permit; and indeed there is such an unpleasantness in surveying these dreary places, that I easily gave up this gratification.

The cave of Trophonius was so awful that whoever visited it never afterwards smiled.

That you, however, my young friend, may have it in your power to form some idea of it, I will transcribe a description of it, by the ingenious James Ferguson, who made himself so celebrated by his study of astronomy.

"DEVIL'S CAVE, OR PEAK'S HOLE.

"The entrance (says that gentleman) into this complicated cavern, is through an almost regular arch twelve yards high, formed by nature, at the bottom of a rock, whose height is eighty-seven yards. Immediately within this arch is a cavern of the same height, forty yards wide, and above one hundred in length. The roof of this place is flattish, all of solid rock, and looks dreadful over head, because it has nothing but the natural sidewalls to support it. A packthread manufactory is therein carried on by poor people, by the light that comes through the arch. Towards the further end from the entrance, the roof comes down with a gradual slope to about two feet from the surface of the water, fourteen yards over, the rock in that place forming a kind of arch, under which I was pushed by my guide across the water in a long oval tub, as I lay on my back in straw with a candle in my hand, and was, for the greatest part of the way on the river, so near the arched roof, that it touched my hat if I raised my head but two inches from the straw on which I lay on the tub, (called the boat,) which I believed was not above a foot in depth. When landed on the further side of this water, and helped out of the boat by my

guide, I was conducted through a low place into a cavern seventy yards wide and forty yards high, in the top of which are several openings upwards, so high that I could not see to their tops. On one side of this place I saw several young lads with candles in their hands climbing up a very rough ascent, and they disappeared when about half way up. I asked my guide who they were, and he told me they were the singers, and that I should soon see them again, for they were going through an opening that led into the next cavern. At eighty seven yards from the first water I came to a second, nine yards broad, over which my guide carried me on his back. I then went under three natural arches at some distance from one another, and all of them pretty regular; then entered a third cavern, called Roger's Rain-house, because there is a continual dropping at one side of it like moderate rain! I no sooner entered that cavern than I was agreeably surprised by a melodious singing which seemed to echo from all sides, and on looking back I saw the above-mentioned lads in a large round opening, called the chancel, nineteen yards above the bottom where I stood. They sang for what the visitors pleased to give them as they re

turn.

"At the top of a steep rugged stony ascent, on one side of this cavern, I saw a small irregular hole, and asked my guide, whether there was another cavern beyond it? He told me there was—but that very few people ventured to go through into it on account of the frightful appearance at the top

DEVIL'S CELLAR.

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of the hole, where the stones seemed to be almost loose and ready to fall and close up the passage. I told him that if he would venture through I would follow him-so I did, creeping flat, the place being rather too low to go on all-fours. We then got into a long, narrow, irregular, and very high cavern, which has surprising openings of various shapes, at top, too high to see how far they reach! We returned through the hole to Roger's Rainhouse again, and from thence went down fifty yards lower on wet sand, wherein steps are made for convenience. At the bottom we entered into a cavern called the Devil's Cellar, in which my guide told me, there had been many bowls of good rum punch made and drank, the water having been heated by a fire occasionally made there for that purpose. In the roof of this cellar is a large opening, through which the smoke of the fire ascends, and has been seen by the people above ground to go out at the top of the rock. But this opening is so crooked and irregular, that no stone let down into it, from the top, was ever known to fall quite through into the cavern.

"From this place I was conducted a good way onward, under a roof too low to let me walk upright, and then entered a cavern, called the Bell, because the top of it is shaped somewhat like to the side of a bell. From thence I was conducted through a very low place into a higher, in the bottom of which runs a third water, and the roof of that place slopes gradually downward, till it