The English Lakes :: CHAPTER XVII MOUNTAIN TARNS

CHAPTER XVII MOUNTAIN TARNS

Perhaps it were more correct to say “minor waters,” for some are hardly within the pale of the mountains. There are, on fell and in dale, above thirty of these tarns, and, as the lakes vary in type of charm, so do these. Their variety, moreover, is even more bewildering than that of the lakes. In the latter’s wide landscapes, no matter what the circumstances of weather or season, one cannot mistake Windermere for Ullswater, Derwentwater for Wastwater. The tarns are, however, entirely different. I think particularly of three views of Angle tarn, under Bowfell, so distinct in what a poet would call their emotions, that memory will hardly recognise the three as having but one geographical position. Scarcely daybreak, we had passed the summit of Bowfell into Ewer Gap. We could see hardly five yards in front, and ere long our leader, though well accustomed to the fell under most circumstances, confessed that he was astray. But on we plodded: “We’ll get somewhere,” though that might be over the crags into Eskdale or headlong down the precipices into Langstrath. At last, when the others began to descend a dangerous slope, the bottom of which could not be seen for boiling mist, I commanded a halt. In a minute or two the mist was torn aside by the morning breeze,—chill, raw, and damp it was even after the fold of night-cloud,—and there “blae as wad,” as we of the dales say, was Angle tarn sheer beneath. Solitary, within a weirdly uptossed land, its shoals seen through a veil of blue water, its depths showing in greater quality of cobalt. We were perched on the front of a lofty rock: a dozen yards forward might have ended in an accident. I am not likely to forget that scene: grey dawn, the brisk breeze, the mist scurrying out of the riven crags around, the eerie feeling of desolation—we were in touch with the soul of Nature at her moment of uprising. Again I saw the tarn at daybreak. We had climbed in the velvety July darkness up the rough penance of Rossett ghyll. The small expanse of water looked violet cool in the growing light; it was calm, and austere with the austerity of a virgin Alpine pool it seemed to me. A soft greyness which the most marvellous steel engraving cannot picture draped all things made, till the great sun leapt over Helvellyn and hurled day on to a land of dreamy repose. Again I came that way when the August sun beat down, and the great barrier of mountains seemed to tremble and to swim in heat-haze. The waters laving the harsh crags were a deep pitiless blue. One felt that the hard blaze had driven all sense of coolness from them. The grass drooped on the fellsides, parsley fern and mountain moss suspended life and made patches of dusty brown, the crags were grey with drought. Not a tree in sight, not a line of shadow save right up there, almost at the mountain-top, a refreshing triangle of darkness, “the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” One’s inmost soul felt the harshness of that day, and that by it the land was robbed of much fairness.

ANGLE TARN, ESK HAUSE

And what romantic situations are occupied by some of our tarns. There is Red tarn, above which towers the upper rampart of Helvellyn. To right is Striding Edge, to left the narrow ridge of Catchedecam. How fine a gloom does the old mountain throw at sunset over this beauteous spot! There is Stye Head tarn, abode of horror, the gloom and beauty of which so impressed Ruskin. The romance of this tarn is heightened when one is privileged to visit it by moonlight. How the great rock-billows, greyly seen, overtower the tiny gully! How man with all his petty conceits falters in the presence of the greatness of Nature’s majesty! One side the pass is impenetrable darkness; across, the light accentuates every ruggedness; streaks from the skyline show where the rivers fall from parent heights. “I felt that I could take out a half-penny and crawl out of sight under it,” said a very unimpressionable person to me after such an experience. “The loneliness crushed my voice, my mind, and, as it seemed to me, my stature. I would have hidden from the scorn of all things made.”

Our minor waters cannot claim much history: most of them are too far into the wilds to be mentioned in ancient story, except in a hazy and collective fashion. Several of our lakes have been served likewise. But that humanity knew of them in far-off ages is sure. By Whinfell tarn Britons of old lived; a canoe was some years ago dug out of the oozy peat there. And on the opposite side of the Country there are extensive ruins of a city within a mile of Devoke Water. Who built Barn Scar cannot be told with surety; for long legend put it down to Danes who peopled it with lads of Drigg and lasses of Beckermet.

But if legitimate history has failed, there is amplitude of legend. Most will have heard of the deathless fish who are said to live in the depths of Bowscale tarn; of the fairy chasm in the sunless deeps of Scales tarn under the frowning Edges of Saddleback. On the fells about them have been seen mysterious armies, coming, coming. Brothers Water has its story of gloom and death: how two pairs of brothers were drowned in it. Of Grisedale tarn, storehouse of King Dunmail’s crown, I have told the story. Gates Water, by Coniston Old Man, has a few weird stories, but they are entwined hopelessly almost. There are stories of pigmies and giants who lived in the wildernesses, of fairies and evil spirits who wail over shapeless mounds of rock, ruins of cities of uncouth days for aught we know.

DALEGARTH FORCE, ESKDALE

To see the heart of Lakeland, one should make the pilgrimage of the Mountain Tarns. It will not be an easy task: the highest fells will have to be crossed—it will need perseverance and strong boots. And even in these days of motor and cycle some humans can and will walk. Many a mile of breezy moorland will be found on such a pilgrimage; not weary when the heather’s purple bells are at their widest, when green grass clothes the ghylls, when the rowan flowers, and the white foam of hawthorn dapples the fellsides,—many a mile of rock and crag, rain-washed, frost-scored, scree-strewn, lichen-covered, many a mile of smooth upland where curlew and plover whistle and wail, where raven and hawk flight for carrion and live prey, where fox and otter, and even red deer, are to be discovered by the alert, nooks where grow our rarest ferns and mosses, waterfalls and rattling cascading becks.

Such a pilgrimage would commence outside the range of the fells. The pedestrian would strike north from the town of Kendal—a grey “burgh of ancient charter proud”—for Whinfell tarn. This is a tarn of the renascence, think the fell-wanderers; Nature having shed her grandest pearls in the gorges and on the rock-shelves to westward, came to bestow her final blessing in the low country. She sat beneath whin-patched Beacon and wept over the sweet scene she could not really decorate. But of all her plenishings she still had a trace, and well she bestowed them: the roach, forgotten when char were placed in Winander; a knot of curious weeds which soft currents sway in the peat-bottomed pools, and—a boat. This old punt so often went to the bottom that it was as muddy as a street on a wet day. Nature, those countless Æons ago, endowed Whinfell tarn with it—it was long before emulous Britons fashioned that moss-buried canoe—and what better craft was there, said the contented folk who lived thereabout. But Nature has been superseded in these days, and a boat made by man floats near the reed beds where the angler seeks the pike.

Thence up “Robert Elsmere’s” dale to Greycrag tarn—a lonesome sheet of water under a towering fell-end. It has, say some, a store of amphibious fish; nine months of the year they rejoice in water, the remainder they spend in the depths of the moss. During hot weather the tarn is often quite invisible. I have never seen trace of a fish in Greycrag’s mere, but Old Bob, a veteran rodman of the glens, assures me that they exist.

“But,” I once protested, “they can’t.”

“Noo, luk sta here: when t’ watter’s lah, thoo can hear ’em as weel as see ’em. Yan warm day ah was walkin’ on t’ bog be t’ tarn edge, an’ aw on a sudden ah hard ’em. Yan said, ‘Say, Billy, it’s rare an’ warm to-day?’ ‘Aye, an’ ther’s less watter an’ aw. T’ lile crag’s a yerd oot.’ ‘Thoo nivver says sae! Well, well, hooivver. We’ll hae to git to wark an’ dig doon.’ T’ watter just afoor me turnt aw mucky, an’ ah couldn’t see t’ fish.” That’s corroboration with a vengeance.

Old Bob it was also who first gave me the story of the overland pike and eels which reside in Skeggles Water, a peaty pool on the waste between Longsleddale and Kentmere, visible as you climb up the steeps to Greycrag. These marvellous fish have the power o’ wet nights of leaving the tarn, and slithering their way across the grass patches to where the water runs down into Longsleddale. I have found a dozen men willing to swear they have seen the fish on their journey, but not one who has actually captured a specimen.

From the realms of fancy to the domain of beauty and to Kentmere tarn. This laves the lower screes of Hillbell and Froswick, but Nature’s Kentmere was four miles down the glen. Thirty years or so ago the landlords organised draining operations, and found that they had exchanged two hundred acres of beautiful water for as much useless marsh. Nature, interfered with, had retaliated. The upper reservoir is more strikingly situated. Great mountains leap upward from its shores, scores of brawling streamlets force their way down the sides into it. There are two favourite times for fishing this mere—when a gentle sou’wester ruffles the surface and you get out your fine river tackle, and when after rain the fish scent a feast. It is a case of knowing where the shoals lie thickest for making a pannier.

As we stroll by the water, we have in front the tallest buttress of High Street, about the flanks of which are studded four beautiful waters—Small Water, Blea Water, Hayes Water, and Angle tarn. The nearest of these is reached over Nan Bield pass by which a fair amount of inter-dale traffic passes. One day a flock of sheep will make the grey rocks ring with their plaints, another they may resound to the mellower lowings of driven cattle. My first glimpse of Small Water was at sunset. Afternoon was far spent when we faced the mountain ways. Along the hilltops the sun flashed golden fire, the fells to eastward were haloed in bright mist, cool shadows fell and spread around. Then after an (it seemed an interminable) hour, we came here. Not a spark of direct light fell into the hollow of the hills, but the waters shook off responsive glows to day’s aftermath reigning in the skies. The air was hushed, the wagtails flittering about the grey stones were soothed to cuttering monotones. Oh, to stay were glorious indeed, to watch the now radiant vault fade through most subtle hues to grey and then to clear blue of night and starry rest. But on we had to go—often the most ravishing scene has to be inexorably hurried through, for man has many interests, and the most peaceful, the most soul-filling, are not in the way of the world the most important. Would that more of us could, like the poets whose dreamings inspired the mighty deeds of old, and of to-day as well, sit by the hour in these realms of beauty and delight, and calmly let their spirit sink into us. We would write better, live better; but what we call duty intervenes and the inner pulsations of living nature remain unknowable. Nature as seen indoors with the microscope is unfolded to us every day by our great leaders of thought; but few of these great minds care for or have the leisure to instil into themselves, and thence transmit to us, the broader splendours of field and fell and mere.

BLEA TARN AND LANGDALE PIKES

Small Water fills a tiny depression in the mountain; it is well stocked with trout, many of which have a curiously large number of vermilion spots on them. The angler who comes here on an evening in late July may find recompense for his trouble, but a rodman’s panoply is no light weight to bring those three miles from Mardale, or six from Kentmere.

From the upper crags of High Street one looks into a deep well, bounded by rock and scree, to see lonely Blea Water. Its shores are fringed with great fragments rent from the rugged heights which almost overhang. The raven nests in inaccessible gullies above the rippling waters, and one associates their solemn croakings with the shadow-filled basin of crag. A few stunted perch exist in the sterile mere: what hope of rich life can there be from rain-flooded ghylls and mist-moistened crags? Only at sunrise does the scene become joyous. From beyond the Pennines the day’s first warming beams kiss life into seams and rents, signs of wild winter nights and gloomed, frosty days. One great rock-sentinel has a story of the dalesman sport of fox-hunting to tell. Its front is split up by a score ravines, where the stone is rotten and weather-worn. Ledges where a fox can lie at peace from the baying pack are there in scores: Reynard can climb up and down where the agilest hound dare not approach. During one long chase the fox, sorely pushed, attempted to “benk” in this crag. The pack, to prevent accidents, were “whipped off.” The followers essayed to examine the rock-face to discover the redskin and, if possible, to oust him from his refuge. In his eagerness one Dixon, scrambling in a rotten ghyll-head, slipped and fell headlong to a great depth. His body rebounded thrice from the rocks—hence the shattered watercourse is known as “Dixon’s Three Loups.” With both legs broken, the fallen sportsman came to rest, jammed behind a pinnacle of rock. Espying the fox making cautiously over the vertical rock he called to his friends, who were with the hounds, “It’s cummen oot be t’ hee end; lig t’ dogs on.” Reynard’s ruse was frustrated, and a kill made in due course. Dixon’s injuries, beyond the fractured legs, must have been confined to contusions, for, years afterwards, he joined in the hunt with unabated keenness.

Hayes Water has no story to tell the wanderer: it is out of the way of history and legend. Many a hunt passes along its glen, but no commanding crags claim adventure and peril. It is among the most beautiful of our tarns, and the ghyll by which its outflow passes to the Goldrill is a paradise. Cataract and dimpling pool, lush moss and clinging ivy, alder, rowan, ash, and birch; here the beck gurgling in a deep channel, there, in the realm of bracken, sliding down the hardened stone it cannot pierce. The stream is a playground of the dipper, the wagtail, the kingfisher. Suddenly the rivulet charges down a rocky ravine, and emerges, as a clear, calm brook, in the level glen of Goldrill. But one hardly yet follows it, for across the heather and towsled grass there is an Angle tarn to see. This small pool on the level moor is a haunt of the wild red deer from Martindale. Skeletons of several of them were found here after the terrible winter of 1895, when for weeks the ground was frost-bound, and the heather buried in snow. But Angle tarn, as well as Hayes Water, is famous to the angler; permission to enjoy this sport must, however, be sought from the lord at Lowther Castle, in whose manor both lie.

A SUDDEN SHOWER, BLEA TARN

Brothers Water, up a branch of the Goldrill, affords fair sport to the rod. Its shores the wandering kind would think, but erroneously, tame. No huge crag leaps up from it, but its surroundings are of singular ruggedness. The lofty, bristling front of Red Screes, and the purpled fields of broken crag on Kirkstone fell, face the nobbly Hartsop Dodd. The ridges are cut up by narrow chasms down which in flood-time, like hordes of wild horses, unbridled torrents fling. The glen above the tarn is given over to one of the largest sheep-farms in the district. Its acreage is counted, as its fleeces, by the thousand.

It is a far cry and a rugged way to Grisedale tarn, but the climb is worth doing. Up the ghylls you climb on your route to Fairfield; and when you reach the topmost ridge in sight, you find the deep narrow gulf of Deepdale lies between. You detour round the head of this glen. It is glorious wild country, this home of shepherd craft. There is no good path; you follow the wandering sheep-tracks where they serve, and leave them the moment you find their trend unfavourable. It is eerie when the mist suddenly wraps around. Then you may have to trust to dead reckoning for your safety. But, on a clear day, the vertical views from the narrow approach to Fairfield, into Rydal and Deepdale are charming: on either horizon is the flash of water—Windermere, Coniston, Ullswater. The ridge of Fairfield crossed, suddenly breaks a new glen into the mountain wall, and at the same time there is revealed to you a whirlpool of distant summits. Right below is the tarn of Grisedale. Seen on a dull day it is an abode of mystery: deep, so deep blue that one feels that it were a lower firmament; pure, so pure and fresh that it seems impossible that through it one might not journey to a fairy paradise.

This grand cleft in the mountain wall was haunt of the wild boar and of great eagles for long after less wild regions were cleared. To-day you see nothing sterner than the peregrine whizzing after towering larks. I well remember assisting to drive a flock across this upland basin. Of all scenes in dales life, few are prettier than well-driven sheep passing over open land. The collies, watchful, obedient to call or whistle of their master, follow the wings of the mob; the shepherd is behind the centre, and the broad front of grey fleeces and black faces, a thousand or more strong, steadily, readily, moves to pastures new, and the delicate green grass, with grey crags and darker stripes of moss, combines all into an idyllic picture.

KIRKSTONE PASS AND BROTHERS’ WATER

From Grisedale, there is Helvellyn to climb on the way to Red tarn, and to a tiny pool beneath the northern screes known as Keppel Cove tarn. A tour further afield would be across the knife-like Edges of Saddleback to the lonesome tarns immured beneath their cliffs. We, however, journey over the ridge between Fairfield and Seat Sandal for Grasmere’s sweet vale. There are many views across the pass to Helm Crag, with its uncouth rocks on top, figures of monsters frozen speechless from the dim twilight of time.

From Grasmere there is a particularly fine mountain walk, with a ring of tarns as its objective. Starting from the tourist village one passes up Easedale, then begins to ascend the side of Sour Milk ghyll. Come when there has been rain and a tortured chain of water flies down four hundred feet of rocks, in a succession of gleaming spouts. But in the days of drought the rocky pathway is bare and almost dry, the rivulet drips noiselessly down the inclined rocks. At the head of the force you enter the realm of the fell properly. The true mountain moth flutters by; the moss beneath your feet is racemed with fox’s tail, least civilised of plants. The ring-ouzel, the blackbird of the fells, is often here—in the waterworn rocks are its nesting-places. The bracken throws off its sweetest scent. The tarn side is a peaceful scene under most conditions, but when a gale rages you see the water fly off in sheets. The scene is glorious, but the buffetings are tremendous. Easedale tarn is among the larger in size, its trout are more easily caught at hours and seasons when the tourist is unknown. At evening get out the boat and float toward the outlet. The weeds here are the nightly haunt of the best fish.

Our next tarn is Codale, perched on a shelf six hundred feet higher than Easedale tarn—a mere rock pool, but in situation most romantic. Fishing here—well, there are a few trout to be got by the lucky. “Codale tarn? Ah, we used to come at it after we had done Stickle tarn. Old Jonty knew it well. Once when I was with him—it was a blazing June day—he said he could get the fish in Codale. ‘How?’ I asked. ‘By minding my own business.’ He produced two lengths of line, and along them fixed the hooks and baits common to the lath. ‘Noo, thee gang that side o’ t’ tarn, ah’ll gang this.’ The line was between, and we soon dragged the narrow water from one to the other. There wasn’t a fish missed. One after another they swum up; what the baits were Old Jonty wouldn’t say—salmon roe most like, for he was a terrible poacher. We got four pounds of fish with the single drag, more than I had seen in a week of tarn fishing in that blazing weather.”

STEPPING-STONES, FAR EASEDALE, GRASMERE

A few weird things are told of the wild upland where lies Codale tarn, stories as wild as the demon hunts of Dartmoor. Through the mists the wanderer often fancies a face distraught with pain and toil. It is the weird of a lost soul. The first time I was a-wandering in this region I was caught in a dense cloud, and, the stories still fresh in my mind, I felt rather nervous that some horror would come to light. It is wonderful what vivid imaginings come when one is astray in the mist. I have a great many times seen visions in the grey beards—so clear, so true, that once I hailed a comrade whose face I saw, though he himself was forty miles away. Codale tarn, to my mind, is the prettiest mere of all: stand back from its outlet and drink in the picture—the narrow dark band of water, the great pile of rock dabbed with spits of grass, seamed with moss-laces and with parsley fern. Above the crags, where a spot of snow oft lingers till June, is the azure sky, and the dots of winged things.

Over the hills and away to the tarn of Stickle. At clear midnight the hollow is at its finest—when the sky is gemmed with stars and over the jagged Pavey Ark the northern light pulses and flows, and the mountains swim in delicate folds of vapour. It is fairy time—the wee folk must survive in this abode of eternal peace. The crags overhanging the tarn are full of problems for the rock-climbing cult—one or two of the gullies are almost first-rate. The “shepherd’s path,” which few dalesmen ever use, is dangerous to any one not trained to this severe work—I mention this as a warning. The tarn holds trout of large size and exceptional quality. In winter this basin is an awesome place for a ramble. The great plinth which ends Pavey Ark rises almost without a patch of white—a pillar of darkness. Other parts of the fell are plentifully smeared with drifts. When the snow has lain for a week or two there is snow craft to be practised here, but things are better further afield on the Scawfell group.

From Stickle our wanderings should carry us down past the racing fosse, and away into Little Langdale where we pause at Blea tarn. This was the haunt of Wordsworth’s “Solitary,” chief figure in his poem, “The Excursion.” Little Langdale tarn, which lies somewhat further down the glen is a small weedy pool in a meadow-land. Its waters for long have provided little sport, for they are overstocked with tiny useless trout. A net used with judgment might improve the fishing here. But Little Langdale tarn has its own peculiar charm of quietness. It is a haunt of the heron and otter. And over it stands the grand barrier of Tilberthwaite fell, from the base of which, in solemn echoing blasts, “the quarried thunders ring.” The hillsides around are pitted with ugly little scars of abortive quarries. Still down the glen, we pass Colwith, where the stream makes a sudden leap into a lower country. It is a pretty enough spout, but on enclosed ground, and therefore few wanderers of the fells confess its beauty. The white farm at the cross road, as you turn into Great Langdale, of course has been an inn. One of its old-time landladies was wont only to brew when there was a prospect of sale. The water from the spring was good enough for her household, with milk if they felt dainty. Her customers chiefly came eastward over Wrynose pass. It was a long stretch, and a thirsty, from the last tavern in that direction. The landlady was not accustomed to waste material, so every morning when she judged that packmen from Whitehaven were due she walked up the hill above the farm to watch for their coming. If but few ponies appeared crawling down the steep, then the malt was stinted, but if the pass-head was, in her opinion, “black wi’ folk,” more ale was prepared. One morning a traveller, tired of the slow pack-train, pushed on ahead, and duly came to the inn. Ale he called for, and was informed: “Oh aye, ye can hae ale, but it’s rayther warm just yet.” The traveller had beaten the new brew down to Colwith.

LITTLE LANGDALE TARN

To Elter Water the lane winds through dense coppice, and emerges into the open just before the village is reached. Here the chief industry is the making of gunpowder, with also slate quarrying and the production of the famous Langdale linen. John Ruskin it was whose teaching brought this craft back into being, and in a quiet way it is doing good to the valley. I wonder if the dales farmer will ever turn his attention to the cultivation of flax. At one time a plot of this staple was more necessary to a farmstead than a vegetable or even a herbal garden.

Elter Water is a larger picture of the elements comprised in Little Langdale tarn. Except that it is at the foot of the Langdales there is little to be said about it. The pike are so numerous that few perch even stay with them. Loughrigg tarn, which we visit before getting over the ridge to Grasmere, is of a different class to any we have yet met with. Christopher North described it as “a diamond set in emeralds,” and he was not wrong. Where are waters more sparkling, or meadows greener than these? In a secluded corner of the world, Loughrigg does nothing but look pretty: there is no message to the mind from its beauty save that of surpassing beauty in repose.

Coniston is a splendid place to start from for another journey. The nearest point is Gates Water, under Dow crags. The way is not particularly difficult, but the scenery is impressive. The great crag rising sheer almost from the water’s edge is a haunt of the raven, a bird yearly growing scarcer as the wildernesses become less wild, and as the shepherd gets more reliable fire-arms. But, says legend, there is one raven quite impossible to reach. It has dwelt on Kurnal Crag since the dawn of Britain’s history. Yet it failed its post. It was the Druid’s familiar, and when invasion rolled nor’ward it became a sentry over the settlement of Torver. “False bird,” cried the old Druid, when from the mystic holly circle he saw the Britons’ camp burning and the Roman legion pursuing the defeated remnant of his people, “and this is how thy promise of sleepless day and night is fulfilled. Thou wast to croak when danger threatened, and instead I wake to see thee join the invader’s rank.” “Nay, father Druid, I went to fight the yellow bird they carry in their van. It is but a bit of burnished bronze they hold up, and no bird, and I stayed too long surveying it.” “Venerable bird, venerable as myself and as old, I had it in my mind to condemn thee to die, but instead thou shalt live, live, live on the topmost crag of Dow, till another army sweep away the Roman, and the yellow bird is carried southward over sands.” The time came when the Roman legions hurried south, and the raven, well stricken in years, hoped for release; but it did not come, for the last legion, on a misty morning, became involved in a swamp on Torver moor, and standard-bearer and burnished bird were swallowed in deep mud. There they lie and moulder, and the old story is that unless they are found and the eagle carried south the raven of Kurnal Crag may not die. You can hear its aged, rumbling croak afar off, at times when thunder is in the air, and you linger in the gulf of Gates Water to hear the first echoing bellow of the storm.

ELTERWATER AND LANGDALE PIKES

From Gates Water the wanderer goes over the Old Man to Low Water, really one of the most elevated mountain waters. It is splendidly situated, screes and boulders from forbidding cliffs falling right to its shores. It is pleasant to be here at sunset and watch the gloom collect on the summits around. The tarn is credited with almost diabolically large trout, but no one catches them now, and anglers are sceptic. The hillside you traverse to reach Levers Water is almost honeycombed with the shafts of old copper mines. “Mines Valley” indeed was once the busiest haunt of men in the Lake Country. Its copper is now being exploited afresh, and the prosperity of sixty years ago may be repeated. Some of us would rather hear the skirl of the curlew than the roar of ore-mills, but if dividends are possible the lover of the untamed land will once again have to move on. There is no guarantee, save at Thirlmere, that an unspeakable hideousness of industry will not suddenly blot out our remotest haunt. From Levers Water the rambler climbs the ridge toward Seathwaite tarn, now a reservoir for the use of warrior Barrow. This tarn the lord of the manor had the exclusive right to net, and the annual occasion was always made a picnic. Nets were shot, and the finny spoil, char, trout and perch, drawn ashore. Then, as quickly as possible, a tithe of them was prepared and cooked at fires on the shingly strand. The merry-making was a splendid break in the silence of the year here. The tarn also has a small gullery, though miles from the nearest arm of the sea.

The charms of Tarn Hows I have mentioned in my chapter on Coniston Water; it is well worthy an afternoon’s ramble, though if the visitor can put off the hour till the last charabanc has rattled down the glen, he will be the more repaid.

SEATHWAITE TARN, DUDDON VALLEY

My space limit has long run out, so I must only indicate the positions of a last knot of tarns. Devoke Water, within a few miles of Eskdale Green, holds pink-fleshed trout, the progenitors of which are said to have been brought by the monks of Furness Abbey from sunny Italy. Burnmoor tarn lies between lofty Scawfell and Wastwater Screes. The moor around is studded with Druid circles and other memorials of a vanished race. Then in Stye Head pass is a dark brooding tarn; on the fell towards Great End is Sprinkling tarn, near which is the famous rain gauge, where annually the highest English rainfall is recorded. In twenty minutes an inch of rain once fell here; I have had several quick-time drenchings in this neighbourhood. On the fells between Wastwater and Ennerdale are Scoat and Lowfell tarns, the former of which is reputed to contain a golden fish, and the latter a silvery one. Floutern tarn is the furthest away of the mountain waters, lying on the desolate fell between Buttermere and Ennerdale.

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