Geographical Position—Etymology—Attractions—A String of Authorities—The Lake—Its Attributes—Statistic—Piscatorial—Commercial—Fatal, and Scenic.

Conistone, anciently Conyngstone and Cunyngstone, is situated in that isolated portion of Lancashire which, divided from the mother county by Morecambe Bay, bears the general designation of Lonsdale North of the Sands, and in the extensive sub-division of Lonsdale North called High Furness, which, the map will tell you, lies between Windermere and the Duddon, and between the Brathay, in Little Langdale, and Low Furness.

Of its name, different derivations are given by different authorities. Some give it a British origin, viz., “ton a town, con at the head of, is a lake.” Others say it is from the Saxon “Konyg'ston,” thereby inferring it to have been, some time or other, a residence or appanage of royalty. Others, less profound and less ambitious, derive its name from the facilities for hiding in “times of trouble” afforded by the intricate and inaccessible character of its cliffs, crags, and boulders, and call it Cunning Stone. The first describes its position—the second may flatter the loyal vanity of its residents, and the third accords with its natural character, its ancient orthography, and the A BAKER’S DOZEN OF PANEGYRISTSlocal pronunciation of its name; therefore take which best suits your taste, and allow me to tell you something about it as we find it now.

The beauties of Conistone have never been adequately described, neither has it received even “the shadow of justice” from any writer since the days of Gray, the poet, old West, the antiquary, and Mrs Anne Radcliffe, of romance-spinning celebrity, all of whom wrote of the scenery of Conistone in terms of quaintly eloquent eulogium. Indeed, the once popular, and still admired, fabricatrix of “Mysteries,” places it pre-eminent over all its neighbours in its diversity of beauty; and, since her day, many have spoken or written in praise of one or more of the items which go to make up the sum of its unparalleled attractions.

A lady of high rank and wealth informed me that the salubrity of its atmosphere is such that, when in very precarious health, and advised by an eminent court physician to proceed to Madeira as her only chance of recovery, a few weeks’ residence at Conistone restored her to robust and permanent health.

Professor Wilson says, that when “you come in sight of the Lake of Conistone, the prospect is at once beautiful and sublime,” and “you will acknowledge that Conistone can almost bear a comparison with Windermere.” And even he admits elsewhere, that it surpasses Windermere in the quality of its char!—perhaps, to most people, the highest praise he can give it.

Another equally experienced, though not equally eminent gastronome, declares its black-faced mutton to be incomparably the best ever boiled.

Professor Sedgwick, in his “Geology of the Lake District,” names Conistone thrice for any other locality once.

Experienced and successful mining adventurers class it A1., on account of its underground wealth.

Dr Charles Mackay says that Conistone Water is “the most placid of all the lakes.”

Thomas de Quincey, the English opium-eater, speaking of the view of Conistone from the road near Tarn Hows, says—“to which, for a coup de theatre, I know nothing equal.”

A talented artist of indisputable taste says, that no other vicinity affords such an abundance of subjects for fine pictures.

The rain-gauge states, that scarcely one-half of the rain falls here that falls at Keswick, (where, by the bye, Lord Byron makes a devil say it usually rains).

Last and best, Miss Martineau says, the traveller “has probably never beheld a scene which conveyed a stronger impression of joyful charm; of fertility, prosperity, comfort, nestling in the bosom of the rarest beauty.”

And I, being neither bard, antiquary, romancist, moral philosopher, gourmand, natural philosopher, miner, bookmaker, opium-eater, painter, moist weather meter, nor philanthropist in particular, but the least in the world of them all, “in the abstract”—keeping its scenery, atmosphere, geology, mineralogy, fish, flesh, and fine weather all at once in view, and lumping, as is fair, the opinions of all these great and undeniable authorities together,—hold it to be matchless, not only in the Lake district of England, but in the world, at least in any part of it that I have seen.

In executing my agreeable task of pointing out some of the more prominent of the beauties and attributes of Conistone, I shall suppose you, my reader (should I gain one) to be a diffident, well-disposed young gentleman, located at the Water Head Inn, and just coming down stairs after a capital night’s rest. It is no matter, for our present purpose, how you contrived to get there without seeing anything I am going to shew you, but there you LENGTH, &c., OF CONISTONE LAKE.are, “with shining morning face,” praying complacently, as you trip down stairs, that you may never find yourself in worse quarters. You may present my compliments to Mrs. Atkinson, and request her to let you have breakfast in the parlour with the projecting window. If you be very hungry, you had better not look out yet; but, should there be any delay in the appearance of your breakfast, a thing not very likely, you may amuse yourself with the visitor’s book until it comes in; but don’t scribble any nonsense in it, as has been done by some youths who have been permitted by their mammas to leave home prematurely.

Breakfast being brought in, whilst you are eating, I may as well say a word or two on the statistics of the lake whose head lies within a few yards of your feet, and whose ancient name was Thurston Water. It is about six and a half miles long, therefore ranks next after Windermere and Ullswater in point of size, or, to speak very exactly, in point of longitude, for I should suppose the area of Bassenthwaite Water to be larger than the area of this lake, it (Bassenthwaite), though only four miles long, carrying a better breadth with it than Conistone Water, whose greatest width does not exceed a mile, many parts not half a mile, the average lying, perhaps, between them. Its greatest depth is stated in the Guide Books to be twenty-seven fathoms, but a map or chart of the lake in my possession, which was made from actual survey, many years ago, by a talented native of the dale, gives the depth of forty fathoms at about two-thirds of the distance down the lake, and twenty or thirty yards from the western shore. This places the depth of Conistone Lake second only to that of Wastwater, which is stated by some to be forty-five fathoms, by others to be unfathomable. Conistone Lake contains, in addition to some mere rocks, two islands. The uppermost, called Knott’s Island, after its ISLANDS, FISH, AND MERCHANDISE.proprietor, or more frequently, Fir Island, from its handsome covering of Scotch firs, becomes peninsular in very droughty weather; and the lower, called Peel Island—why, I don’t know—or Montagu Island, after the Dukes of Montagu, formerly Lords of the Manor, and succeeded by the Dukes of Buccleugh, or by the Aborigines, the “Gridiron,” the best name of the three, inasmuch as it pretty accurately describes its shape, it having a handle or shank of rocks projected in lengthened chain from its south-western side, is covered by natural wood of no great altitude; and its rocky sides are so high and precipitous, as to render landing upon it a matter of difficulty, if not of danger, but, for all that, pic-nic parties sometimes resort to it. There was also a floating island about twenty yards square, finely covered with young birches of decent stature, which used to move about the lower end of the lake, but unfortunately it was stranded amongst the reeds near Nibthwaite by a strong north-east wind which prevailed for a day or two in October, 1846, when the lake was unusually swollen by heavy rains. I shall, perhaps, point it out to you by and bye.

As to the lake’s vulgarly useful qualities, it contains the best char in the world, and quantities of unsurpassable trout of delicious flavour, and often of large size—for instance, there was one cut up at your present quarters, some time since, which weighed fourteen pounds. Of its pike, I need only say that one of them roasted or baked “with a pudding in its belly,” is, on certain occasions, worth all the scenery in the neighbourhood. It is also rich in eels and perch, more particularly the latter. It serves as a commodious highway towards the port of exportation for two hundred and fifty tons of copper ore every month, as well as for nobody knows how much slate, flags, birch brooms, and small timber. Conjointly with the circumjacent mountains and valleys, and the SOMETHING “OLD KIT” SAYS.copper mines, it brings, during each laking season, a goodly haul of fish to your host’s net, in the form of tourists and visitors. There has been only one person drowned in it within the memory of man, and he was a stupid, drunken fellow, who walked into it over the slate quay. Of course, under these circumstances, the most harmless water in the world could do nothing else but drown him.

Of its ornamental characteristics you shall judge for yourself, as soon as you finish eating.

Well, having despatched a few cups of coffee and a fair proportion of a most satisfactory array of etceteras, (for be it remarked, en parenthese, that a breakfast furnished by Mrs Atkinson does not yield even to that at Grasmere described by Christopher North, in terms sufficiently graphic, “to create an appetite under the ribs of death,”) you may take a look from the window. Your first impulse is an expression of gratitude to me for advising you to make a hearty breakfast before looking forth, for assuredly, say you, this would, if seen before, have effectually withdrawn your attention from the creature comforts before you, albeit first-rate.

The eminent Scotchman already twice mentioned, who is a high-caste laking authority, although his judgment is somewhat warped by his attachment to his own Windermere, says, somewhere, that a man sitting where you do now, might fancy himself looking from the cabin window of a ship at anchor in a beautiful land-locked bay of some island in the South Sea. You don’t know how far that flight may be correct; but you think that the Pacific bays must, in beauty, fall somewhat short of the scene before you. And you are nearer right than the great Christopher, who is out of his latitude in the South Seas, else he had never drawn the pretty-sounding comparison. Though many of the bays in those seas are lovely enough, yet few, RHYME AND A REASON FOR IT.as I am told, can come within a day’s sail of Conistone Water, so far as ordinary impressions of the beautiful may bear me out; and the beauties of Conistone, as they are manifold, so are they manifest even to the lowest order of taste, or talent, or whatever the principle may be that enables a common-place man, like myself, to distinguish beauty when he looks at it, and as they are apparent to all, so must they be appreciable by every one, and—but I am waxing enthusiastic, and shall, if I go on, become intolerably nonsensical, for, with me, there is not even the one step between the sublime and the ridiculous; therefore, as I prefer being absurd in verse to being ridiculous in prose, till I cool down a little—

There, there! you seem to have had enough of that, and I, having let off my superabundant steam, may now get on in a sedate, business-like manner. The placid lake and its winding shores you are now staring at, and tastefully, as you perceive, are its winding shores decorated with timber disposed in rich variety of thriving young plantations, clump, grove, coppice, hedge-row, solitary tree, avenue, and shrubbery, gracefully interblended here, and separated by fields and wide pastures of glorious verdure there, the whole finished off on the east, which we shall dispose of first, by miles and miles of heath purpled moorland. Along the lake on its said eastern side, are the finely-sheltered grounds of Tent Lodge, Bank Ground, Conistone Bank, Brantwood, and Water Park. The lake appears to terminate at about five miles distance—in fact, a little below “the Gridiron,” or a mile and a half from the lake foot—the water thereabout making a gentle sweep to the east. The southward prospect is bounded by the high-lying moor of Gawthwaite, from whence the green and cultivated slopes of Lowick and Blawith appear to descend in easy gradation to the water edge. Bringing the eye back along the western shore, your attention is next arrested by the brightly verdant, WESTERN SHORE.cultivated and conical height of Stable Harvey, standing out in fine contrast against the dark brown Beacon hill in Blawith, which considerably overtops it, and forms, with its broken outline, a highly picturesque background to the landscape in that direction. The landward edge of Stable Harvey is hidden from where you are, by the lengthened heath-clad summit, and coppiced and furze-clad side of Torver common, which rises steep from the margin of the lake to a considerable height. As you follow up the margin of the lake, you next descry the beautiful farm of Hawthwaite, with its rookery, plantations, and numerous single trees, occupying a fine situation under the northern shoulder of Torver common, and presenting one of the most eligible sites for a gentleman's seat, with extensive grounds, in the north of England. Nearer still, you see a promontory covered with bright verdure, and tipped, or fringed, with low spreading wood, running out, as it seems from the Water Head, into the very middle of the lake. It is the Hall Point; the grounds lying between it and Hawthwaite, and extending from the water side to the tops of the heights more than a mile to the westward, form the ancient deer-park, which possesses such a luxuriant and widely-extended covering of natural timber, as might gladden the hearts of those who affect to hold that any utilitarian interference with nature tends grievously to degrade or destroy the romantic characteristics of lake scenery. The Hall itself is concealed by the upper arm of the bay, with the trees and neat, but singular and high, steep-roofed edifice upon it. The said building is a boat-house belonging to “The Thwaite,” a handsome residence upon the southern declivity of the richly-wooded eminence to your right, over which you may note “The Old Man,” anciently, and more correctly, “Alt Maen” (British),

and looks, from this window, something like part of the back and head of a huge elephant, with his trunk slightly extended and a wart on his forehead.

You had better now take a boat and row a mile or two down the lake, and row yourself, or, if you are lazy, at least sit with your face to the stern, and fresh beauties will open upon your enraptured gaze at every stroke of the oars.

Beyond, or above, the inn you are leaving, is the residence of Mr James Garth Marshall, one of the princely manufacturers of that name in Leeds; it is surrounded by—excepting in some particulars Rydal Hall—decidedly the finest demesne in the Lake district, so far as the most beautiful combination of all the elements of natural and artificial loveliness can establish its superiority; for nowhere else have I seen wood and water, hill and valley, green sward and purple heather, rugged crag and velvet slope, grey rock and bright blossoming shrubs brought under the eye at once, in such magnificent contrast. Over the western side of the grounds, you may note the picturesquely rugged and jagged summit of Raven Crag, at the head of Yewdale, and nearer to you, but still more to the west, the wild, precipitous and lofty Yewdale crags. Over them the long ridge of Henn Crag, and higher still the broad summit of Weatherlam; and, as you row farther down the lake, the lofty undulating range connecting those with the Old Man, which last you may now contemplate in all his hoary grandeur and rugged magnificence. And, having just shewn you one of the finest demesnes and grandest mountain groups in the Lake district, I now shew you the most romantically situated village, parts nestled at the foot of the steep craggy hills, and parts stuck here and there upon the face of the adjacent declivity, every separate detachment, whether consisting of one or many houses, having its own separate designation, “TIME’S CHANGES.”but forming altogether the village of Church Conistone, and containing, by the last census, twelve hundred people. Its scattered appearance suggests the idea of something having, at some former period, flown across the country with a bagful of houses, and losing a number here in irregular lots through a hole in the sack. And here, close by in the apex, or, to speak nautically, the bight of the bay, between a row of lofty sycamores and the wide-spread woods of the old park, stands Conistone Hall, the ancient seat of the once warlike family of le Fleming, but now a farm house—with a considerable portion removed, and the banquet hall, wherein, of old, knightly revellers befuddled their brains in honour of high born ladies, converted into a barn, and a mighty commodious barn it makes; but how very applicable would be a quotation from Hamlet here, were it not hackneyed. The hall's most striking features now are its massive ivy-clad chimneys, though it is well worthy a closer inspection, and I shall perhaps tell you more about it at our next confabulation.