Having thanked Mr Parker for his courtesy, and, if you can afford it, left a small gratuity for the men, you may proceed upon your way, which is a very pleasant one, as ways go, winding through woods and fields into the valley you traversed on your way to Wrynose. Then cross this same valley to examine another slate-quarry belonging to Mr Marshall, in which you will find a magnificent cavern, not dark, but quite as light as any part of the world without, having an ample window near its roof; it is nearly circular, about forty-five yards in diameter, and the same in height, forming a grander dome than is possessed by any artificial edifice I have yet beheld.
CHAPTER XII.
Little Langdale—Blea Tarn—Great Langdale—Langdale Pikes—Wallend—Mill-beck—Dungeon Ghyll—Chapel Stile—Langdale Church-yard—Elterwater—Hackett—Colwith and Colwith Force—Tarn Hows—Finale.
Quitting the slate quarries, you follow the road by which you formerly travelled on your way to the classic Duddon, till you reach the stream separating Lancashire from Westmorland. You now cross this stream at the point where you approach it, and at once enter Little Langdale, up which the road takes you past “the New Houses,” Birk How, “Langden Jerry,” The Busk, and Langdale Tarn, all of which have been noticed either collectively or separately, on a previous occasion. After winding by a rough ascending road, half way round the mountain range called Lingmoor, you arrive at Blea Tarn, which, to quote the Professor, is “a lonely, and if in nature there be anything of that character, a melancholy piece of water!” It is thus finely described in Mr Wordsworth’s Excursion, as the abode of his Solitary:
'Urn-like it is in shape—deep as an urn;
With rocks encompassed, save that to the south
Is one small opening, where a heath-clad ridge
Supplies a boundary less abrupt and close,
A quiet treeless nook with two green fields,