T. G. BONNEY. [Illustration: TRENT LOCKS.] [Illustration: JUNCTION OF THE DERWENT AND THE TRENT.] THE HUMBER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES. CHAPTER IV. THE DERWENT. The Derwent in its Infancy--Derwent Chapel and Hall--Hathersage--Eyam--Grindleford Bridge--Chatsworth--The "Peacock" at Rowsley--Haddon Hall--The Wye and the Lathkill--Darley Dale and its Yew tree--The Sycamores of Oker Hill--The Matlocks and High Tor--Cromford and Willersley Castle--Ambergate--Belper--Derby--Elvaston. It might be interesting to ask how many Englishmen have made the tour of the Derwent--a river so rich in pictorial beauty and historic interest. If the country were polled upon the subject, the result would probably not be gratifying to local patriotism. And yet no more romantic revelations of river scenery exist than those traversed by the Derwent from its source among the dusky moorland heights of the Peak to its junction with the Trent, sixty-three miles from its mountain home, after collecting the waters of 300,000 acres of country. Other streams there are, of course, of greater magnitude, with mountain surroundings more stupendous; but beauty is not to be measured by bulk, or rivers by their breadth and volume, nor is the artistic charm of hills ascertainable by an aneroid. There are several English rivers of the name of Derwent, which is derived from the British _dwr-gwent_, the water of "Gwent," or of the high lands, and the word is often locally pronounced "Darent." There is Wordsworth's Derwent in Lakeland; a Derwent which falls into the sea near Scarborough; and again a Derwent that is a tributary of the Yorkshire Ouse. But it is the Derbyshire Derwent that we now propose to trace down from its source. In the north-east corner of the Peak district, on the stern and austere Yorkshire borderlands, where the Langsett moors are most lonely and impressive, the stream spends its earliest infancy, and you hear its baby prattle in a rocky region, wild and desolate, where the Titans might have been hurling in space gigantic boulders to bring about chaos. The place where the river actually rises is called Barrow Stones. The traveller on the line from Sheffield to Manchester, when he is at Woodhead, with its dismal tunnel and long-linked reservoirs, passes as near as civilisation touches the spot. For some distance the river bubbles and babbles down a boulder-strewn valley, and is the line of demarcation between the counties of York and Derby. It is here a swift tawny streamlet, with effervescent cascades, and deep pools in which you can discern the pebbles at the bottom of the topaz-coloured water. Weather-worn masses of rock are strewn over this heathery wilderness--silvered with rare lichens, and cushioned with delicate mosses. Here and there picturesque little rills pour out their trickling tributaries from numerous mountain springs and musical ferny hollows. The only sound