But I am sorry to tell you I have brought a cough from the cavern that does not at all please me; indeed, it occasions me no little pain, which makes me suppose that one must needs breathe a very unwholesome damp air in this cavern.  But then, were that the case, I do not comprehend how my friend Charon should have held it out so long and so well as he has.

This morning I was up very early in order to view the ruins, and to climb a high hill alongside of them.  The ruins are directly over the mouth of the hole on the hill, which extends itself some distance over the cavern beyond the ruins, and always widens, though here in front it is so narrow that the building takes up the whole.

From the ruins all around there is nothing but steep rock, so that there is no access to it but from the town, where a crooked path from the foot of the hill is hewn in the rock, but is also prodigiously steep.

The spot on which the ruins stand is now all overgrown with nettles and thistles.  Formerly, it is said, there was a bridge from this mountain to the opposite one, of which one may yet discover some traces, as in the vale which divides the two rocks we still find the remains of some of the arches on which the bridge rested.  This vale, which lies at the back of the ruins and probably over the cavern, is called the Cave’s Way, and is one of the greatest thoroughfares to the town.  In the part at which, at some distance, it begins to descend between these two mountains, its descent is so gentle that one is not at all tired in going down it; but if you should happen to miss the way between the two rocks and continue on the heights, you are in great danger of falling from the rock, which every moment becomes steeper and steeper.

The mountain on which the ruins stand is everywhere rocky.  The one on the left of it, which is separated by the vale, is perfectly verdant and fertile, and on its summit the pasture hands are divided by stones, piled up in the form of a wall.  This green mountain is at least three times as high as that on which the ruins stand.

I began to clamber up the green mountain, which is also pretty steep; and when I had got more than half way up without having once looked back, I was nearly in the same situation as the adventurer who clambered up Mam Tor Hill, for when I looked round, I found my eye had not been trained to view, unmoved, so prodigious a height.  Castleton with the surrounding country lay below me like a map, the roofs of the houses seemed almost close to the ground, and the mountain with the ruins itself seemed to be lying at my feet.

I grew giddy at the prospect, and it required all my reason to convince me that I was in no danger, and that, at all events, I could only scramble down the green turf in the same manner as I had got up.  At length I seemed to grow accustomed to this view till it really gave me pleasure, and I now climbed quite to the summit and walked over the meadows, and at length reached the way which gradually descends between the two mountains.