We crept over a pavement of fractured blocks, into a broad, low passage that seemed to have been hewn by giants out of the solid Limestone. All around were the marks of a powerful, swirling current, that had split and torn the rocks asunder, and bored its way through their joints; yet not a grain of sand or a speck of mud was visible on their cleaned and polished surface. Fissures and passages twisted away at the side, but returned in a few yards to the main corridor. In the roof were discernible the clean-cut hollows whence slabs of Limestone had fallen that still cumbered the floor. The large chamber that we reached finally was bestrewn and heaped up with such masses, and all the ways of egress save one were entirely blocked up. This very soon came to an abrupt termination in a bell-shaped cavity, floored with a crust of stalagmite. But there were narrow fissures, a few inches only in width, running away in many directions; a strong draught made the candles gutter; and the occasional presence of great volumes of water was made evident by the damage done to some of the incrustations. There was no sign or sound of flowing water now; the silence was as profound and impressive as the darkness. Yet this rock-strewn chamber was once the birthplace of a river. Hither, from countless fissures, the streamlets gathered together and poured through the hidden places of the hill, now in a rippling brook, and now in a torrent, crashing and rending. At present the Cales Dale stream finds its way to the Lathkill river by still more secret channels. But at no infrequent times, even yet, the torrent thunders over the waterfall in the Pot Hole Cavern, the swallet is inundated, and a flood pours on through the long tunnel, and so into the open stream-course in the dale, now dried up and covered with vegetation. Proofs of this were legible all around us.