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Page 271:-
not go on with ease and pleasure. Perhaps if we had mustered
humility and fortitude enough to have crouched and crawled a
little, we might have come to where the roof again would have
been as high as we should have desired. In some places there were
alleys out of the main street, but not extending to any great
distance, so as to admit of passengers. The rocks jutted out, and
were pendant in every grotesque and fantastic shape: most of them
were covered over with a fine coating of spar, that looked like
alabaster; while icicles of various shapes and colors were
pendant from the roof - all generated by the fine particles of
stone that exist in the water, which transudes through the roof
and sides, and leaves them adhering to the rock in their descent
to the bottom. The various-coloured reflections, made by the
spars and petrifactions that abounded in every part, entertained
the eye with the greatest novelty and variety; while, at the same
time, the different notes made by the rill in its little
cascades, and reverberated from the hollow rocks, amused the ear
with a new sort of rude and subterranean music, but well enough
suited to our slow and gloomy march. This was the longest
subterranean excursion we had yet made; and if we might have
formed our own computation of its extent, from the time we were
in going and coming, and not from the real admeasurement of our
guide, we should have thought it two or three times as long as it
was - so much were we deceived in our estimate of a road unlike
any we had ever before travelled. The romantic cascades, pools,
and precipices in the channel of the river Ribble, that runs by
the mouth of this cave, are not unworthy the notice of a
stranger.
We were in some suspense whether we should pursue the
turnpike-road over Cam, to see the natural curiosities in
Wensleydale: but as we learnt there was only one remarkable
object of the genus of those we were now in quest of,
Hardraw-scar, we desisted: as we should have lost others more
valuable, which lay in a different rout (sic). The description,
however, which was given of it by our reverend guide, was so
lively and picturesque, that its own merit will be a sufficient
apology for its insertion.
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