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Page 31
April 17.--Already I feel the benefit of this wonderful
upland air. The farm of the Allertons lies fourteen hundred and
twenty feet above sea-level, so it may well be a bracing climate.
Beyond the usual morning cough I have very little discomfort, and,
what with the fresh milk and the home-grown mutton, I have
every chance of putting on weight. I think Saunderson will be
pleased.
The two Miss Allertons are charmingly quaint and kind, two dear
little hard-working old maids, who are ready to lavish all the
heart which might have gone out to husband and to children upon an
invalid stranger. Truly, the old maid is a most useful person, one
of the reserve forces of the community. They talk of the
superfluous woman, but what would the poor superfluous man do
without her kindly presence? By the way, in their simplicity they
very quickly let out the reason why Saunderson recommended their
farm. The Professor rose from the ranks himself, and I believe
that in his youth he was not above scaring crows in these very
fields.
It is a most lonely spot, and the walks are picturesque in the
extreme. The farm consists of grazing land lying at the bottom of
an irregular valley. On each side are the fantastic limestone
hills, formed of rock so soft that you can break it away with your
hands. All this country is hollow. Could you strike it with some
gigantic hammer it would boom like a drum, or possibly cave in
altogether and expose some huge subterranean sea. A great sea
there must surely be, for on all sides the streams run into the
mountain itself, never to reappear. There are gaps everywhere amid
the rocks, and when you pass through them you find yourself in
great caverns, which wind down into the bowels of the earth. I
have a small bicycle lamp, and it is a perpetual joy to me to carry
it into these weird solitudes, and to see the wonderful silver and
black effect when I throw its light upon the stalactites which
drape the lofty roofs. Shut off the lamp, and you are in the
blackest darkness. Turn it on, and it is a scene from the Arabian
Nights.
But there is one of these strange openings in the earth which
has a special interest, for it is the handiwork, not of nature, but
of man. I had never heard of Blue John when I came to these parts.
It is the name given to a peculiar mineral of a beautiful purple
shade, which is only found at one or two places in the world. It
is so rare that an ordinary vase of Blue John would be valued at a
great price. The Romans, with that extraordinary instinct of
theirs, discovered that it was to be found in this valley, and sank
a horizontal shaft deep into the mountain side. The opening of
their mine has been called Blue John Gap, a clean-cut arch in
the rock, the mouth all overgrown with bushes. It is a goodly
passage which the Roman miners have cut, and it intersects some of
the great water-worn caves, so that if you enter Blue John Gap you
would do well to mark your steps and to have a good store of
candles, or you may never make your way back to the daylight again.
I have not yet gone deeply into it, but this very day I stood at
the mouth of the arched tunnel, and peering down into the black
recesses beyond, I vowed that when my health returned I would
devote some holiday to exploring those mysterious depths and
finding out for myself how far the Roman had penetrated into the
Derbyshire hills.
Strange how superstitious these countrymen are! I should have
thought better of young Armitage, for he is a man of some education
and character, and a very fine fellow for his station in life. I
was standing at the Blue John Gap when he came across the field to
me.
"Well, doctor," said he, "you're not afraid, anyhow."
"Afraid!" I answered. "Afraid of what?"
"Of it," said he, with a jerk of his thumb towards the black
vault, "of the Terror that lives in the Blue John Cave."
How absurdly easy it is for a legend to arise in a lonely
countryside! I examined him as to the reasons for his weird
belief. It seems that from time to time sheep have been missing
from the fields, carried bodily away, according to Armitage. That
they could have wandered away of their own accord and disappeared
among the mountains was an explanation to which he would not
listen. On one occasion a pool of blood had been found, and some
tufts of wool. That also, I pointed out, could be explained in a
perfectly natural way. Further, the nights upon which sheep
disappeared were invariably very dark, cloudy nights with no moon.
This I met with the obvious retort that those were the nights which
a commonplace sheep-stealer would naturally choose for his work.
On one occasion a gap had been made in a wall, and some of
the stones scattered for a considerable distance. Human agency
again, in my opinion. Finally, Armitage clinched all his arguments
by telling me that he had actually heard the Creature--indeed, that
anyone could hear it who remained long enough at the Gap. It was
a distant roaring of an immense volume. I could not but smile
at this, knowing, as I do, the strange reverberations which come
out of an underground water system running amid the chasms of a
limestone formation. My incredulity annoyed Armitage so that he
turned and left me with some abruptness.
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