button to main menu   West's Guide to the Lakes, 1778/1821

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Page 248:-
the bottom and sides so dark, that, with all the light we could procure from our candles and torches, we were not able to see the dimensions of this cavern. The light we had, seemed only darkness visible, and would serve a timid stranger, alone, and ignorant of his situation,
To conceive things monstrous, and worse
Than fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd -
Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire.
Milton.
The height of the cave was somewhat between a dozen and twenty yards; the breadth about the same dimension with the height; and the length at least fifty or sixty yards. Some of the party, who had seen both, thought it much more stupendous and magnificent than the famous Peak's-hole, in Derbyshire.
Having passed a small brook, which one of the party called the Stygian lake, we came to the western side of the cave. It is a solid perpendicular rock of black marble, embellished with many rude sketches, and names of persons now long forgotton (sic), the dates of some being above two hundred years old. After we had proceeded thirty or forty yards northward, past some huge rocks that had at sometime fallen from the roof or side, and arrived at a collonade of rude massy pillars, standing obliquely on their bases, the road divided itself into two parts, but not like that of Eneas, when descending in the realms of Pluto -
Hac inter Elysium nobis; at loeva malorum
Exercet poenas, et ad impia Tartarus mittit.
Virgil's En. b.6. l.542.
'Tis here in different paths the way divides;
The right to Pluto's golden palace guides;
The left to that unhappy region tends,
Which to the depth of Tartarus descends,
The seat of night profound, and punish'd fiends.-
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