In descending to the valley, we came upon a little rivulet among hazels and hollies and young oaks, as wild and merry as a mountain brook of our own country.  Cowslips and wild hyacinths were in flower upon its banks, and blue violets as scentless as our own.  We followed it until it fell into the larger stream, when we crossed a bridge and arrived at a white house, among trees just putting out their leaves with plots of flowers in the lawn before it.  Here we received a cordial welcome from a hospitable and warmhearted Scotchman.

After dinner our host took us up the side of the mountain which forms the northern barrier of Edale.  We walked through a wretched little village, consisting of low cottages built of stone, one or two of which were alehouses; passed the parsonage, pleasantly situated on the edge of a little brook, and then the parson himself, a young man just from Cambridge, who was occupied in sketching one of the picturesque points in the scenery about his new habitation.  A few minutes active climbing brought us among the heath, formming a thick elastic carpet under our feet, on which we were glad to seat ourselves for a moment’s rest.  We heard the cuckoo upon every side, and when we rose to pursue our walk we frequently startled the moor-fowl, singly or in flocks.  The time allowed by the game laws for shooting them had not yet arrived, but in the mean time they had been unmercifully hunted by the hawks, for we often found the remains of such as had been slain by these winged sportsmen, lying in our path as we ascended.  We found on the top of the hill, a level of several rods in width, covered to a considerable depth with peat, the produce of the decayed roots of the heath, which has sprung and perished for centuries.  It was now soft with the abundant rains which had fallen, and seamed with deep muddy cracks, over which we made our way with difficulty.  At length we came to a spot from which we could look down into another valley.  “That,” said our host, “is the Woodlands.”  We looked and saw a green hollow among the hills like Edale, but still more bare of trees, though like Edale it had its little stream at the bottom.

The next day we crossed the Mam Tor a second time, on a visit to the Derbyshire mines.  On our way, I heard the lark for the first time.  The little bird, so frequently named in English poetry, rose singing from the grass almost perpendicularly, until nearly lost to the sight in the clouds, floated away, first in one direction, then in another, descended towards the earth, arose again, pouring forth a perpetual, uninterrupted stream of melody, until at length, after the space of somewhat more than a quarter of an hour, he reached the ground, and closed his flight and his song together.  The caverns which contain the Derbyshire spars of various kinds, have been the frequent theme of tourists, and it is hardly worth while to describe them for the thousandth time.  Imagine a fissure in the limestone rock, descending obliquely five hundred