After I had enjoyed this indescribably beautiful sight for some time, my guide came back, and carried me safely down the hill again on his shoulders.  And as I now stood below, he went up and let his candle shine again through an opening of the rock, while I covered mine with my hand; and it was now as if on a dark night a bright star shone down upon me, a sight which, in point of beauty, far surpassed all that I had ever seen.

Our journey was now ended, and we returned, not without trouble and difficulty, through the narrow passage.  We again entered the temple we had a short time before left; again heard the pattering of the rain, which sounded as rain when we were near it, but which at a distance seemed a sonorous, dull, and melancholy hum; and now again we returned across the quiet streams through the capacious entrance of the cavern to the little door, where we had before taken our leave of daylight, which, after so long a darkness, we now again hailed with joy.

Before my guide opened the door, he told me I should now have a view of a sight that would surpass all the foregoing.  I found that he was in the right, for when he had only half opened the door, it really seemed as if I was looking into Elysium.

The day seemed to be gradually breaking, and night and darkness to have vanished.  At a distance you again just saw the smoke of the cottages, and then the cottages themselves; and as we ascended we saw the boys still playing around the hewn trunk, till at length the reddish purple stripes in the sky faintly appeared through the mouth of the hole; yet, just as we came out, the sun was setting in the west.

Thus had I spent nearly the whole afternoon till it was quite evening in the cavern; and when I looked at myself, I was, as to my dress, not much unlike my guide; my shoes scarcely hung to my feet, they were so soft and so torn by walking so long on the damp sand, and the hard pointed stones.

I paid no more than half-a-crown for seeing all that I had seen, with a trifle to my guide; for it seems he does not get the half-crown, but is obliged to account for it to his master, who lives very comfortably on the revenue he derives from this cavern, and is able to keep a man to show it to strangers.

When I came home I sent for a shoemaker.  There was one who lived just opposite; and he immediately came to examine my shoes.  He told me he could not sufficiently wonder at the badness of the work, for they were shoes I had brought from Germany.  Notwithstanding this, he undertook, as he had no new ones ready, to mend them for me as well as he could.  This led me to make a very agreeable acquaintance with this shoemaker; for when I expressed to him my admiration of the cavern, it pleased him greatly that in so insignificant a place as Castleton there should be anything which could inspire people with astonishment, who came from such distant countries; and thereupon offered to take a walk with me, to show me, at no great distance, the famous mountain called Mam Tor, which is reckoned among the things of most note in Derbyshire.