Robert Southey

Borrodale.—Wasdale.—Waswater.—Calder Bridge.—Ennerdale.—Crummock Water.—Lake of Buttermere.—Lakes on the Mountains.

The Lakes which we were next to explore lay south-west, and west of Keswick. We took an early breakfast, provided ourselves with some hard eggs, slung our knapsacks, and started about seven, taking the horse-road to Lodore. The morning promised well, there was neither sun to heat us, nor clouds enough to menace rain; but our old tormentors the flies swarmed from the hedges and coppices by which we passed, as many, as active, as impudent, and hardly less troublesome than the imps who beset StAnthony. For half a league we had no other view than what a gate, a gap in the hedge, or an occasional rise of ground afforded. On the left was an insulated hill of considerable height wooded to the summit, and when we had left this, a coppice which reached to the foot of a long and lofty range of crags, and spread every where up the acclivity where soil enough could be found for trees to take root. This covered road terminated in a noble opening: from a part which was almost completely overbowered we came out at once upon a terrace above the Lake, the open crags rising immediately upon the left. Among these rocks some painter formerly discovered the figure of a female, which, with the help of imagination, may easily be made out, and accordingly he named the place Eve's crag, because, he said, she must certainly have been the first woman.—Lodore was glittering before us, not having yet discharged all the rain of yesterday; and Borrodale, into which we were bound, became more beautiful the nearer we approached.

We had consulted tourists and topographers in London, that we might not overpass any thing worthy of notice, and our Guide to the Lakes was with us. They told us of tracts of horrible barrenness, of terrific precipices, rocks rioting upon rocks, and mountains tost together in chaotic confusion; of stone avalanches rendering the ways impassable, the fear of some travellers who had shrunk back from this dreadful entrance into Borrodale, and the heroism of others who had dared to penetrate into these impenetrable regions:—into these regions, however, we found no difficulty in walking along a good road, which coaches of the light English make travel every summer's day. At the head of the lake, where the river flows into this great reservoir, the vale is about a mile in width, badly cultured because badly drained, and often overflowed; but the marsh lands had now their summer green, and every thing was in its best dress. The vale contracted as we advanced, and was not half this width when, a mile on, we came to a little village called the Grange.

This village consists of not more than half a score cottages, which stand on a little rising by the river side,—built apparently without mortar, and that so long ago that the stones have the same weather-worn colour as those which lie upon the mountain side behind them. A few pines rise over them, the mountains appear to meet a little way on and form an amphitheatre, and where they meet their base is richly clothed with coppice wood and young trees. The river, like all the streams of this country, clear, shallow, and melodious, washes the stone bank on which the greater number of the pines grow, and forms the foreground with an old bridge of two arches, as rude in construction as the cottages. The parapet has fallen down, and the bridge is impassable for carts, which ford a little way above. The road from the bridge to the village is in ruins; it had been made with much labour, but has been long neglected, and the floods have left only the larger and deeper rooted stones, and in other places the floor of rock; the inhabitants therefore are relatively poorer than they were in former times.—In this scene here are all the elements which the painter requires; nothing can be more simple than the combination, nothing more beautiful. I have never in all my travels seen a spot which I could recall so vividly; I never remember it without fancying that it can easily be described,—yet never attempt to clothe my recollections in words without feeling how inadequately words can represent them.

Another mile of broken ground, the most interesting which I ever traversed, brought us to a single rock called the Bowder Stone, a fragment of great size which has fallen from the heights. The same person who formerly disfigured the island in Keswick Lake with so many abominations, has been at work here also; has built a little mock hermitage, set up a new druidical stone, erected an ugly house for an old woman to live in who is to show the rock, for fear travellers should pass under it without seeing it, cleared away all the fragments round it, and as it rests upon a narrow base, like a ship upon its keel, dug a hole underneath through which the curious may gratify themselves by shaking hands with the old woman. The oddity of this amused us greatly, provoking as it was to meet with such hideous buildings in such a place,—for the place is as beautiful as eyes can behold, or imagination conceive. The river flows immediately below, of that pale gray green transparency which we sometimes see in the last light of the evening sky; a shelf of pebbles on the opposite shore shows where it finds its way through a double channel when swoln by rains:—the rest of the shore is covered with a grove of young trees which reach the foot of a huge single crag, half clothed with brush-wood:—this crag when seen from Keswick appears to block up the pass. Southward we looked down into Borrodale, whither we were bound,—a vale which appeared in the shape of a horse-shoe.

This lovely vale when we had descended into it, appeared to lie within an amphitheatre of mountains; but as we advanced we perceived that its real shape was that of the letter Y: our way lay along the right branch. They have a pestilential fungus in this country which has precisely the smell of putrid carrion, and is called by the fit name of the stinker. It is so frequent as to be quite a nuisance along the road. We passed through one little village, and left a second on our right, the loneliest imaginable places;—both villages, and the few single houses which we saw in the vale, have pines planted about them. A third and still smaller village called Seathwaite lay before us, drearily situated, because no attempt has been made to drain the land around, easily as it might be done. Above this lies the mine of black-lead of which those pencils so famous over all Europe are made,—it is the only one of the kind which has yet been discovered. We could not see it, as it is worked only occasionally, and had just been shut.

Our attention had been too much engaged by the delightful scenes around us to let us think of the weather, when, to our surprise, it began to rain hard:—there was no alternative but to proceed, for we were between two and three leagues from Keswick. Dreary as the wet and plashy ground about Seathwaite had appeared as we approached, it became cheerful when we looked back upon it,—for it seemed as if we were leaving all inhabitable parts,—nothing but rock and mountain was to be seen.—When we had almost reached the extremity of this ascending vale, we came to a little bridge, as rude as work of human hands can be; the stream making a little cataract immediately under it. Here the ascent of the mountain began, a steep, wet, winding path, more like a goat's highway than the track of man. It rained heavily; but we consoled ourselves with remarking that the rain kept us cool, whereas we should otherwise have suffered much from heat. After long labour we reached a part which from its easier acclivity seemed almost like a plain; and keeping by the side of a little stream came to a small mountain lake, or Tarn as it is called in the language of the country. A crag rose behind it; the water was so dark that till I came close to it I could scarcely believe it was clear. It may be thought that there is nothing more in a pool on the mountains, than in a pool on a plain,—but the thing itself occasions a totally different sensation. The sense of loneliness is an awful feeling. I have better understood why the saints of old were wont to retire into the wilderness, since I have visited these solitudes. The maps call this Sparkling Tarn; but Low Tarn is the name given it in the neighbourhood, and another about half an hour's height above it they call High Tarn. This other is omitted in the maps, which, indeed, the knowledge we have of their track, little as it is, enables us to say are very incorrect. It would make a fine picture, and the height of its situation might be expressed by alpine plants in the foreground.

Beyond this there was about half a mile still up, and by a steeper road. Having reached the highest point, which is between Scafell and Great Gabel, two of the highest mountains in England, we saw Wasdale below bending to the south-west, between mountains whose exceeding height we were now able to estimate by our own experience,—and to the west the sea appeared through an opening. The descent may without exaggeration be called tremendous; not that there is danger, but where any road is possible, it is not possible to conceive a worse. It is, like the whole surface round it, composed of loose stones, and the path serpentizes in turns as short and as frequent as a snake makes in flight. It is withal as steep as it can be to be practicable for a horse. At first we saw no vegetation whatever; after a while only a beautiful plant, called here the stone-fern, or mountain parsley, a lovely plant in any situation, but appearing greener and lovelier here because it was alone. The summits every where were wrapt in clouds; on our right, however, we could see rocks rising in pinnacles and grotesque forms,—like the lines which I have seen a child draw for rocks and mountains, who had heard of but never seen them,—or the edge of a thundercloud rent by a storm. Still more remarkable than the form is the colouring; the stone is red; loose heaps or rather sheets of stones lay upon the sides,—in the dialect of the country they call such patches screes, and it is convenient to express them by a single word: those which the last winter had brought down were in all their fresh redness, others were white with lichens; here patches and lines of green were interposed. At this height the white lichen predominated, but in other parts that species is the commonest which is called the geographical from its resemblance to the lines of a map; it is of a bright green, veined and spotted with black,—so bright as if nature, in these the first rudiments of vegetation, had rivalled the beauty of her choicest works. Wasdale itself, having few trees and many lines of enclosure, lay below us like a map.

The Lake was not visible till we were in the valley. It runs from north-east to south-west, and one mountain extends along the whole of its southern side, rising not perpendicularly indeed, but so nearly perpendicular as to afford no path, and so covered with these loose stones as to allow of no vegetation, and to be called from them The Screes. The stream which accompanied our descent was now swoln into a river by similar mountain torrents descending from every side. The dale is better cultivated at the head than Borrodale, being better drained; and the houses seemed to indicate more comfort and more opulence than those on the other side the mountain; but stone houses and slate roofs have an imposing appearance of cleanliness which is not always verified upon near inspection. Ash trees grow round the houses, greener than the pine, more graceful, and perhaps more beautiful,—yet we liked them less:—was this because, even in the midst of summer, the knowledge that the pine will not fade influences us, though it is not directly remembered?

The rain now ceased, and the clouds grew thinner. They still concealed the summits, but now began to adorn the mountain, so light and silvery did they become. At length they cleared away from the top, and we perceived that the mountain whose jagged and grotesque rocks we had so much admired was of pyramidal shape. That on the southern side of the dale head, which was of greater magnitude, and therefore probably, though not apparently, of equal height, had three summits. The clouds floated on its side, and seemed to cling to it. We thought our shore tamer than the opposite one, till we recollected that the road would not be visible from the water; and presently the mountain, which had appeared of little magnitude or beauty while we passed under it, became, on looking back, the most pyramidal of the whole, and in one point had a cleft summit like Parnassus; thus forming the third conical mountain of the group, which rose as if immediately from the head of the Lake, the dale being lost. But of all objects the screes was the most extraordinary. Imagine the whole side of a mountain, a league in length, covered with loose stones, white, red, blue, and green, in long straight lines as the torrents had left them, in sheets and in patches, sometimes broken by large fragments of rocks which had unaccountably stopt in their descent, and by parts which, being too precipitous for the stones to rest on, were darkened with mosses,—and every variety of form and colour was reflected by the dark water at its foot: no trees or bushes upon the whole mountain,—all was bare, but more variegated by this wonderful mixture of colouring than any vegetation could have made it.

The Lake is a league in length, and the hilly country ends with it. We entered upon a cultivated track, well wooded, and broken with gentle swells, the mountains on the right and left receding towards Ennerdale and Eskdale. About half a league beyond the end of the Lake we came to a miserable alehouse, the first which we had found all day, where they charged us an unreasonable price for milk and oaten bread. We went into a church-yard here, and were surprised at seeing well-designed and well-lettered tombstones of good red stone, in a place apparently inhabited by none but poor peasantry. In about another league we came to a larger village, where manufactures had begotten alehouses; in the church-yard was a pillar of the Pagan Danes converted into a cross, once curiously sculptured, but the figures are now nearly effaced. Here we came into the high road which runs along the coast, and in a short time arrived at a little town called Calder Bridge, where, to our comfort, after a walk of not less than seven leagues, we found a good inn. The bridge from which this place is named is very beautiful; the river flows over rocks which it has furrowed at the banks, so that shelves of rock jut out over the water, here green, here amber-coloured; ash, mountain-ash, and sycamores overhang it.——We have seen inscriptions over some of the houses in Saxon characters to-day,—a proof how long old customs have been retained in these parts.