The new and exciting game of cave-exploring has been pursued so strenuously during the last four years that one would almost think the possibilities of fresh discoveries had been exhausted. When a little while ago, therefore, rumours came in of a big cavern in Lathkill Dale, so big that people were said to have been lost in its recesses, they were received not a little incredulously. But after the usual allowances had been made for exaggeration and myth, and the alleged casualties reduced to the misfortunes of a sheep-dog who spent fourteen days in the cavern, probably rock-bound on a ledge, it still appeared that there was something worth exploring. Accordingly two friends, Messrs. W. H. and G. D. Williams, who were residing near Matlock, kindly undertook to find the cave or caves, and see what was to be done; and a native of Middleton was commissioned to make further inquiries. First, a letter arrived with the disappointing intelligence that there was no cave on the Lathkill, nothing but old mine workings: but hard on its heels came a wire to say that a cave had been located and was being explored tentatively. Then further messages arrived with mention of another opening, but which was the reputed great cavern was a question to be settled only by a regular exploration.

A day was fixed for the campaign, and my section of the party drove up early in the morning from Bakewell Station on the Midland. Our friends were waiting at the head of Ricklow Dale, a mile below the little village of Thornyash, and we proceeded without delay down that streamless canyon, first over smooth greensward between the grim Limestone walls, then hopping from point to point of huge, close-packed fragments, until we reached the uppermost cave mouth. It has a very imposing entrance, solid piers supporting a massive lintel, about 20 feet wide. It opens in the west cliff of Ricklow Dale, at a height of 690 feet above sea-level, and is evidently the source at times of a large stream. Ricklow Dale is really the upper part of Lathkill Dale, above the junction with Cales Dale, and the head streams of the Lathkill originally flowed down it from the neighbourhood of Monyash. But at a later period, seemingly, the stream betook itself to an underground course, until it emerged into the open from this cave. At the present time the cave is swept by water only when the deeper cavities of the rock overflow. This happened, for instance, a few weeks ago, when the cave discharged a considerable stream, and was for the time being quite impenetrable to man. As the Messrs. Williams had been into this cavern a day or two before, we left it for the present, in order to try some unexplored openings farther down the dale.

On the same side of the dale they had detected the entrance to something, whether cave or mine they knew not, covered in by stones and earth. With pick and crowbar an entrance was soon exposed, not much larger than a badger's hole, and we crept through. At once it became evident that the hole was not a natural one; it was no "self-cave," as the country people say, but an ordinary level or a sough draining a lead mine. A pool of water filled the tunnel from side to side, stretching away into the distance; and as we preferred, if wading were necessary, to postpone it as long as we could, we left this alone for the present, and went on with our quest at two other spots in the entrance to Cales Dale. Needless to say, we had missed no opportunity of cross-examining the inhabitants of the district, but the results had been absurdly inaccurate and conflicting. Already a crowd of rustic onlookers had gathered round, but the only individual among them who knew anything about the region inside was the afore-mentioned sheep-dog, who could tell us nothing. He, too, was the only one who showed any inclination to join our underground party. In the upper Cales Dale Cavern, as we named it, he actually went ahead of us, and put our candles in jeopardy with the spirited wagging of his tail.

This cave is doubtless a very ancient channel of the Cales Dale Water, which now runs through hidden crevices till it meets the Lathkill; the span of its antiquity may be gauged by the fact that Cales Dale has been cut 200 feet deeper, and the cave left high and dry, since it was a regular stream-course. I say dry in a comparative sense, for we quickly found ourselves confronted by a short passage of extreme dampness. The main channel runs west for 150 feet, and then divides, both branches dwindling rapidly to mere water-pipes. But near the entrance a branch strikes off to the right. Although the roof came down on our backs as we crawled, we managed to keep just above the surface of a shallow pool that lay in the middle: but a second pool was almost entirely mopped up by our journey to and fro. The passage ended in a chamber where two can stand upright. Every bit of this little nook is covered with a creamy-white and brownish coating of amorphous carbonate. It is like a small empty shrine, with heavy curtains flowing over its walls, their folds and ridges flecked with innumerable scaly projections, like some delicate frilling. The rest of the cave is devoid of charm, though there are interesting masses of white tufa on the walls, as soft as putty.

At the bottom of the dale, almost exactly under and parallel to this upper cave, is a larger one, which we called the Lower Cales Dale Cavern. It is entirely concealed by bushes and nettles, and we had to remove a mass of blocks and detritus before we laid bare the two entrances. Even then, room could not be made for the broad-shouldered member of the party to get in. At the end of 15 feet of very tight wriggling there was more head room. We were in a straight tunnel, arched as evenly as a culvert, the floor covered with the gravelly deposits of a stream. Evidently it is a channel still used frequently by the Cales Dale Water. It ran due west for 300 feet, with room in most places for us to crawl on hands and knees: then it bent one point to the north. Here the stream had thrown up a low dam, behind which it had bored a series of holes on the south side, through which most of it gets away. Soon a wall of rock, shaped like the steps of a weir, confronted us, at the top of which we found ourselves in a wide, irregular chamber, the height of whose roof varied from 6 feet to 18 feet. We called it the Pot Hole Cavern, because of the number of water-worn cavities in the roof. The biggest of these cavities appearing to give entrance to an upper gallery, I climbed into it with the aid of a comrade's shoulder. It contained a pretty grotto, lined with incrustations, but led to nothing. Deep horizontal fissures yawned on every side of the Pot Hole Chamber, and vertical joints split the interposing strata. All the exits, however, came to an end speedily except two, one extending a point east of south, the other a point east of north. I explored the northern branch before my friends arrived. It had several short ramifications, in some of which there were trails of rabbits, and other evidences of a communication with the surface, such as pieces of sodden wood and deposits of soil; but it gave ingress for barely 50 feet. The other branch seemed more important, and as we were tired out and hungry, we left it until we had returned to the dale for rest and lunch, a waste of time, unfortunately, for it ran only for 100 feet farther.

RICKLOW CAVE IN FLOOD.

Photo by G. D. Williams.

We crept over a pavement of fractured blocks, into a broad, low passage that seemed to have been hewn by giants out of the solid Limestone. All around were the marks of a powerful, swirling current, that had split and torn the rocks asunder, and bored its way through their joints; yet not a grain of sand or a speck of mud was visible on their cleaned and polished surface. Fissures and passages twisted away at the side, but returned in a few yards to the main corridor. In the roof were discernible the clean-cut hollows whence slabs of Limestone had fallen that still cumbered the floor. The large chamber that we reached finally was bestrewn and heaped up with such masses, and all the ways of egress save one were entirely blocked up. This very soon came to an abrupt termination in a bell-shaped cavity, floored with a crust of stalagmite. But there were narrow fissures, a few inches only in width, running away in many directions; a strong draught made the candles gutter; and the occasional presence of great volumes of water was made evident by the damage done to some of the incrustations. There was no sign or sound of flowing water now; the silence was as profound and impressive as the darkness. Yet this rock-strewn chamber was once the birthplace of a river. Hither, from countless fissures, the streamlets gathered together and poured through the hidden places of the hill, now in a rippling brook, and now in a torrent, crashing and rending. At present the Cales Dale stream finds its way to the Lathkill river by still more secret channels. But at no infrequent times, even yet, the torrent thunders over the waterfall in the Pot Hole Cavern, the swallet is inundated, and a flood pours on through the long tunnel, and so into the open stream-course in the dale, now dried up and covered with vegetation. Proofs of this were legible all around us.

Returning up the dale, we closed the mouth of the artificial level, and went back to the Ricklow Cavern. Although the portal is so majestic, the passage becomes anything but commodious at the end of a few paces. Once more we had to crawl over hard, water-worn rock, deeply fissured and thrown out of the horizontal; our galled knees and elbows could scarcely be induced to go at all, and the pace was miserably slow. Then the roof came down so close in a horizontal fissure of huge extent, that there was nothing for it but to wriggle. My friends had ascertained that 280 feet of this work leads into a lofty chamber. It is one of those long, vertical fissures, not wide but enormously high, that are common in the Castleton caves. There were indications of galleries overhead, but we were too much exhausted to attempt climbing without a ladder. Only one exit was practicable, which led in 20 feet into just such another hollow, but still wider and uglier of aspect. Filling the cavity to a height of 30 feet was a mountain of shattered rocks, flung together pell-mell and wedged loosely. When we climbed it, the light of our candles showed that the structure was hollow, and hardly more durable in appearance than a house of cards. Some of the rocks were held by points and corners, swinging on their long axes; a touch sent others clattering down, as we crept with the utmost caution up the adjoining wall. It was as if the interior of the hill had been rent apart by an earthquake, and the headlong stream of rocks caught suddenly and held by the closing in of the fracture. We clambered to the summit of this hollow mass of ruin, and lit some magnesium wire. The formless walls went up into a dark void above us, their ledges fringed with glistening spikes and tendrils of transparent stalactite, revealed by the glare. There had been visitors here before. Scratched on the walls, but partially coated over by a crystalline enamel, were the initials "H. B.—R. A.," and the date 1817; other scrawls were indecipherable. No doubt this was the cave whose legendary renown had reached our ears. Getting down our shattered staircase was a more formidable job than the ascent. One stone, as big as a table, rocked like a see-saw when we set foot on it.

Stalactites were not numerous in these caves, which are not only very humid, but continually swept by water. Animal remains were plentiful, all recent, bones being carried in by beasts of prey and deposited by floods. As this process must have been going on for ages, the two Cales Dale caverns would probably yield good results to palÆontological research.

A comic incident cheered my fatigued comrades when we regained the open air. In the morning I had brought my family up from Bakewell Station for a day in the country, a work of supererogation that now placed me in a curious predicament. The waggonette had gone off to pick them up for the early train, and, to my distress, I found the driver had relieved us of all the luggage, including the rÜcksack which held my clothes, not to mention boots, pipe, and railway ticket. The alternative stared me in the face of proceeding to town in slimy overalls or in attire of dangerous slightness. But the broad-shouldered friend came to the rescue with his cave jacket, a garment that fell about me like a baggy greatcoat, hiding the worst deformities, and with battered hobnailers at one extremity, and a cap that had more stiff clay than cloth in it at the other, I made the best of my way home under the cover of darkness.