Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume I.djvu/185

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[173]

return, and re-conduct him into day. Dekin supported the farce with great address; and making a merit of disregarding his own preservation for the sake of the baronet, took him under his direction; feeding his terrors by occasional doubts whether he should be able to discover the intricacies of the caverns, (though every inch of them was as familiar to him as his own threshold) and thus brought him to the ferry just in time to save their passage before the stream met the rock. The adventure, by which justice was satisfied and revenge indulged, served the old man for a laugh as long as he lived.—— We were glad to find that Loutherberg had availed himself of scenes so admirably adapted to his pencil; and committed to the canvas an effect, of all others the most singular, that of distant daylight through the mouth of the cavern, breaking in upon the eye after its having so long been confined to the faint rays of a candle glimmering in outer darkness.

Having compleated our subterraneous excursion, we turned to the right into a ravine called the Cave Valley, to look at a heap of basalt, discovered there a few years ago. This is a narrow glen, sunk between two vast limestone rocks, gradually opening into width as it extends in length. Following this hollow about a mile from Castleton,