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yards farther, stooping almost all the way. At the end of this board-way, we got to a small cavern, and there stood upright to rest ourselves. The miners told us, if we went farther, we must climb up the rock by rails fixed into the sides: That many went no farther than this place, but if we were not afraid we might proceed. We told them to lead on. We climbed for ten yards up the rock, by rail sometimes a yard asunder, and at length got into a large cavern dimly to be seen by our candle light: The dashing noise of a water-fall, to be heard and not seen,added to the terror of the place. Here our guides again asked us if we would proceed, telling us it was forty yards, climbing up the same manner we got hither, to the shaft they worked at. They looked in our faces, to see if we were frightened, but we were determined to go on, and with much labour and difficulty got to the end of our scrambling, which was sometimes through holes in the rock just big enough to admit the body. Here we saw the water-fall, which dashes with a large stream from the top to the bottom of the cavern.
From this place we went on slanting up the rock ten yards, to the place they worked at. We stopped to rest and take some of our brandy, which we now found refreshing to us, and the miners explained the whole process of their work. We each worked out a piece of ore, as a memento of out expedition. The air here was unpleafant, the smell of smoaking and of gunpowder, used in blasting the rock, being not yet gone off. There was another way out, by climbing one hundred and fifty yards farther to the top of the hill; but, as the way lay through another proprietor’s mine, the miners never go to it, unless insisted on by strangers and, as we were someewhat fatigued with the exertions of the day (having come from Buxton, by Elden Hole and Mam Tor) we judged it best to go back as we came. At the top of the cavern, the place we left off climbing, one of the men left a piece of candle alight, which he had brought for that purpose, and we went down, a miner accompanying each to direct our steps in the retrogade motion. We soon got to the bottom of the
