Perhaps the most startling view in all Peakland is that from “Headstone Edge”—as oldfashioned countrymen call the place—at the curve of Monsal Dale. There, after leaving the dusty road and crossing a few yards of grassy waste, one looks down into the great valley, where the Wye runs tranquilly between broken-edged meadows, with abrupt hills on either side. A viaduct crosses the stream; to the left is a smooth lake with gleaming surface. A narrow path descends and runs alongside the bank until the Ashford road is reached.

The uplands above Monsal Dale are dull and uninspiring. No hedgerows are to be seen; the fields are surrounded by walls of loosely built limestone that fall in gaps during every rough storm. A considerable portion of the small farmer’s time must be devoted to their repair. The stone is of a greyish white, and in winter is embellished with orange lichen. The scattered trees that have attained a shrivelled maturity are almost invariably lopsided. Thorns are the most common; sometimes one finds thereon puny flowers long after the passing of mid-summer.Here and there are broken chimneys and sheds of deserted lead mines; those familiar with the country find these not unpicturesque. The masonry still retains its startling whiteness, and neither fern nor moss grows in the interstices. From the distance they resemble castle ruins, and, where the machinery and rotting beams remain, recall to mind Browning’s poem of “Childe Rolande to the Dark Tower Came”. Young folk are fascinated by the precincts of these mines—there are dwarf plantations, deep holes full of discoloured water, and mounds of yellow and white debris, on which bloom in summer wild pansies, golden, pale blue, and richest purple.

Centuries ago this district was the haunt of wolves. Camden writes that in his time “there is no danger of them in these places, though formerly infested by them, for the taking of which some persons held lands here at Wormhill, from whence the persons were called Wolve-hunt, as is manifest from the Records of the Tower”. It is easy enough to picture the red deer being pursued across the waste, and climbing for safety to the rocks that overhang the swiftly flowing Wye.

Despite its railway, Monsal Dale is the Arcady of Peakland, a happy restful place where one never wearies of looking upon the tender green meadows and the clear, winding stream. The cottages seem as though they must be inhabited by a people apart who have little in common with to-day. It is a fitting background for pastorals, dainty and mirth-provoking as Gay’s Shepherd’s Week. When evening falls, the valley takes on an aspect of some grandeur; the hills grow steeper, the trees become stouter of bole and denser of foliage; there is no sound save the comfortable lapping of the stream. At times a hollow rumble sounds in the far distance, increases and increases, and the lighted train flies across the viaduct, and, passing the little station, disappears in the farther tunnel. But for this connection with modern life Monsal Dale would belong altogether to the distant past.

Beyond the Ashford road stretches a weird little ravine known as Demon’s Dale; a dark and narrow place where one would scarce care to go o’ nights. It has a fantastically unreal appearance; it might be a robber’s haunt in some oldfashioned melodrama.

Cressbrook Dale opens to the right, near a cotton mill which is less unpicturesque than most of its kind. This valley is scarce known to the ordinary tourist, and yet there is no denying its peculiar beauty. Not far from the mill stand some melancholy cottages which a shrewd local wit christened “Bury-me-wick”. At the farther end, near Wardlow Mires, where was the last instance of gibbeting in England, rises a curious rock, in shape not unlike a cottage loaf, which bears the name of “Peter’s Stone”, probably given in the days when the High Peak was a Catholic country.

The trees of Cressbrook Dale are notably fine, and in autumn offer a grand blaze of colour. Old-time writers described the place as a “Dovedale in miniature”, but much allowance must be made for the imagination of those who loved to squander epithets. Cressbrook has in truth no resemblance to Dovedale, and, comparison being out of the question, one may agree it is as well deserving of a pilgrimage. There are some fine crags, a waterfall, and pools bright with cresses; the hartstongue may still be found in the less-accessible nooks, and botanists delight in its rare flora. Cressbrook is always beautiful, but most wonderful at sunset in winter, when the frozen valley is filled with crimson haze.

Nearer Buxton the Wye glides through Miller’s Dale, which of itself is somewhat uninteresting, although where the banks draw together and the stream becomes a rapid there are some exquisite glimpses of miniature caÑons. A road climbs steeply up to Tideswell, where stands the handsomest of Peakland churches, or to Litton, where, centuries ago, dwelt the ancestors of the famous author of The Caxtons.Still higher up the river is the horseshoe-shaped Chee Dale, which is classed amongst our finest instances of limestone scenery. The river and path there are confined between rocky, well-wooded banks. Chee Tor, the great overhanging cliff, is about three hundred feet in height. The beauty of this valley varies greatly according to the season, but throughout the year is seen to perfection on the nights when the moon is at the full.

LATHKIL DALE

The Derwent valley is perhaps the most interesting, since it has so many fine traditions of the ancient Peakland families. There are several halls of considerable dignity, mostly in very secluded situations, and nowadays used as farmhouses. North Lees, near Hathersage, which bears a striking likeness to an ecclesiastical edifice, is well worth a visit to see the remains of pargeting and the corkscrew staircase. Highlow, too, built by the same family and about the same period, still preserves much of its old state—the staircase is singularly handsome, and one of the ceilings is coved with massive timbers. At Nether Padley, two miles away, may be seen a chapel, which is used nowadays as a barn, and also other slight remains of the ancient home of the Fitzherberts. A yearly pilgrimage is made to this place in memory of two seminary priests, by name Garlick and Ludlam, who in Elizabeth’s days were secreted here, discovered, taken to Derby, and, with another, Richard Sympson, hanged, drawn, and quartered. A contemporary ballad describes the last scene.

There is a tradition that these unfortunate men were secreted at Padley in the chimneys of the old chapel; but such as see the place will agree with Doctor Cox that it is more probable that their hiding place was in the hall itself.

Hathersage’s best claim to fame lies in the fact that Robin Hood’s best henchman, Little John, lies in the churchyard. Moorseats Hall, a hillside grange scarcely visible from the valley roads, was used by Charlotte BrontË as the background of the least-interesting part of Jane Eyre. It was there that Jane’s cousins, the Rivers family, dwelt, and the impossible but none the less admirably imagined St. John was presumably vicar of that graceful church. Hathersage is rapidly losing its old charm; rows of genteel “villa residences” are being built, and the place is becoming nothing more than a suburb of the great manufacturing town beyond the hill.

Farther down the valley a strange eighteenth-century house stands on a thickly wooded bank of the river. This is Stoke Hall, once the Peakland home of the Earls of Bradford. The neighbouring folk in former years used to tell a weird story of a skull that haunted the upper story, and one may be sure that they feared to pass alone after “edge o’ dark”. Although Stoke has no pretensions to architectural beauty, its position suggests romance and mystery. In the wood near by stands a renaissance statue known as “Fair Flora”, a gift from the “long-armed” Duke of Devonshire to a member of the Bridgman family, but by popular belief a monument raised to the memory of a young lady who was murdered by a jealous lover.

The Arkwrights once occupied Stoke, and as a child I remember hearing, from an old gaffer, stories of Stephen Kemble—Mrs. Robert Arkwright’s father—who was so corpulent that his calves slipped over his shoe-tops! Perhaps it was at Stoke that the lady set to music Campbell’s song of the brave Roland who expired at Ronceval, a romance beloved by the contraltos of our grandsires’ days.

After Stoke, the Derwent, crossing a great weir, runs over a stony bed to Calver, then through green meadows to Baslow, from whose steep bridge there is a view almost as beautiful as that at Bakewell. Close by stands the little church, disfigured with a grotesque “Jubilee” clock dial. In the vestry may be seen a dog-whip, with which in less civilized times the verger drove out the offending animals. The Derwent has no gorges like the Wye and the Dove. It suggests a comfortable placidity, whilst the others seem young, more vivacious, and reckless.

Dovedale is generally regarded as the most picturesque of the Peakland valleys, and indeed I know no lovelier stretch in spring and in autumn than the two miles between the conical hill of Thorp Cloud and the Dove Holes caverns. It is impossible to travel either in vehicle or on horseback—to see Dovedale one must make use of “Shanks’s Mare”. Sometimes the path runs along the very margin of the stream, sometimes it climbs toy bluffs, whence one may look down mimic precipices. Each salient feature is named—there are to be found on the Staffordshire bank limestone crags known as the “Twelve Apostles”, and on the Derbyshire bank pinnacles which bear the name of “Tissington Spires”. There is also a recess called “Dovedale Church”, and a great cave dedicated to Reynard the Fox. The “Straits” must be passed—sometimes after heavy rain the path is flooded; then one sees the “Lion’s Head” and the “Watch Box”, after which all is green and grey monotony.

Ashbourne is within easy walking distance. In one of the principal streets stands the “Green Man”, a fine old inn with a striking signboard that overhangs the cartway. The eighteenth-century landlady here was described by Boswell as a “mighty civil gentlewoman”. Samuel Johnson often visited his friend Dr. Taylor at a house still existent. A more important memory is that in the Marketplace the Young Pretender was proclaimed as King of Great Britain.

The chief beauty of Ashbourne is the fine old church of St. Oswald’s, with its well-preserved tombs of the Cokayne and Boothby families—those of the former commencing in 1372. The pride of the church is, however, the marble monument of little Penelope Boothby, who died in 1791. The sculptor, Thomas Banks, achieved a masterpiece of pathos in this simple figure of a tired child resting happily. The English inscription—there are also inscriptions in French and Italian and Latin—tells us that the parents, Sir Brooke and Dame Susanna, “ventured their all on this frail bark, and the wreck was final”.

DOVEDALE

Beresford Dale, a few miles from Dovedale, although only a quarter of a mile in length, is almost equally beautiful, and, moreover, is famous as having once been the property of Charles Cotton, Isaac Walton’s bosom friend. In The Compleat Angler one reads of the “Pike Pool” with its upstanding limestone pillar which Viator describes as “the oddest sight I ever saw”. The little fishing house used by the two happy men still stands beside the stream, but to-day one is not permitted to examine closely this shrine of pleasant memories.

Beyond the dreary upland the Lathkil gathers itself together in mysterious underground passages, and appears suddenly as a fair-sized stream. It runs down a narrow, well-wooded dale to the pretty village of Alport, mingles there with the Bradford, and enters the Wye near Fillyford Bridge, within sight of Haddon Hall. Of all Peakland rivers the Lathkil is the purest; its waters have the clearness and lustre of rock crystal. A lordly pleasure for a lazy man is to rest beside the pools and to watch the stealthy glidings of the great trout between the waving weeds.

The streams from the limestone are invariably cold-looking. A sight of the little brook that runs through Middleton Dale is vastly refreshing on a hot summer’s day. The rocks here, castellated in outline, rise to a considerable height, and in May the valley is scented with the yellow gilliflowers that grow in every crevice. Something of the beauty is disappearing; quarrymen have been at work for years, and at the entrance to Eyam Dale the hillside is losing its rugged grandeur. There is a “Lover’s Leap”, with a better-authenticated history than that in the neighbourhood of Buxton, since it is well known that an amorous maiden, many years ago, threw herself from the edge high above and, as she wore a crinoline, reached the bottom without very serious hurt. A small inn marks the site of her escapade. There is also a cave known as Carl Wark, notorious in the district since the body of a murdered pedlar was found there and only identified by his shoe buckles. At the upper end of the dale, on the green platform near where the stream rises from the earth, more often than not are to be seen the vans of gipsies more or less unclean.

Stoney Middleton village is desolate but interesting. There is an ancient mill dam of greenish water, and at one end an octagonal toll house bestrides the entering stream. The village reminds one of Devonshire, save that it is squalid and cold of hue. A quaint middle-aged hall, the property of Lord Denman, rises beside the church, and nearby is a bath, now but little frequented, the heat of whose waters is two degrees higher than that of Matlock’s warmest springs. This is supposed to have been constructed by the Romans; according to old writers many of their coins have been found in the neighbourhood.Until the nineteenth century the only road through the valley was a pack-horse track—vehicles climbing the steep hill of Middleton Moor. In 1664 the Sheriff of Derbyshire, who dwelt in this isolated place, was asked by the judge why he kept no coach, and replied: “There was no such thing as having a coach where he lived, for ye town stood on one end!” The best impression of Stoney Middleton is gained from the highway that runs from Grindleford to Eyam; thence one looks down upon an irregular cluster of roofs, with a veil of light, drifting smoke.

The Delf, a pretty clough with many tall trees, opens at some little distance from the quaint colour-washed inn, and climbs up to Eyam, which, from its historical and literary associations, may be regarded as Peakland’s most interesting village. There, from a gloomy ravine called the “Salt Box”, a rillock creeps and soon loses itself in the grass.