GHYLL AND FALL.
After passing Wall-end, you are fairly upon the floor of the vale of Langdale, and crossing its fertile fields by a tolerable road, and the other branch of the Brathay by an equally tolerable bridge, you follow the road rather down the vale, till you reach the farm house of Mill-beck, where you must stable your steed, whilst you scramble about a quarter of a mile up the fell to look at Dungeon Ghyll. Arrived at the entrance of this famous “rock-dungeon,” where Coleridge says “three wicked sextons’ souls are pent,” and occasionally make a terrible rumpus with “bells of rock and ropes of air,” the devil answering “to the tale with a merry peal from Borrowdale,” you descend by a rude, but stout ladder into the watercourse. After clambering over some rather impracticable rocks, you obtain a full view of the fall, and declare it to be an ample recompense for your journey, had it been five times as toilsome. A perpendicular wall of solid rock rises on each side, scarcely three yards apart, to the height of one hundred feet. At the inner extremity of the chasm, about fifty yards from its external opening, and directly opposite to you as you enter, the water rushes in one clear unbroken fall, from a height of ninety feet, into a deep circular basin, whence a lamb, which had been dashed over the fall without injury, was rescued from drowning by Mr Wordsworth, to await the legitimate fate of all lambs, they, like many of the human species, “being destined to a drier death on shore.” The most curious feature of Dungeon Ghyll is two huge rocks, which appear to have been rolling down simultaneously from the Pikes above, and to have met and jammed together across the top of the chasm, forming a bridge, which it is a favourite feat with adventurous spirits to cross over, and which, in its “contempt of danger and accommodation,” might almost seem to have been placed there to gratify the peculiar taste in bridges of the lamb’s benevolent preserver.
WET OR DRY?
There are various opinions on the momentous question of what is the best weather for visiting falls such as this of Dungeon Ghyll. One eminent lover and describer of mountain scenery, says:—“To our liking, a waterfall is best in a rainless summer. After a flood, the noise is beyond all endurance. You get stunned and stupified, till your head splits. Then you may open your mouth like a barn door, and roar into a friend’s ear all in vain a remark on the cataract. To him you are a dumb man. In two minutes you are as completely drenched in spray, as if you had fallen out of a boat—and descend to dinner with a tooth-ache that keeps you in starvation in the presence of provender sufficient for a whole bench of bishops. In dry weather, on the contrary, the waterfall is in moderation; and instead of tumbling over the cliff in a perpetual peal of thunder, why it slides and slidders merrily and musically away down the green shelving rocks, and sinks into repose in many a dim or lucid pool, amidst whose foam-bells is playing or asleep the fearless Naiad. Deuce a headache have you—speak in a whisper, and not a syllable of your excellent observation is lost; your coat is dry, except that a few dew-drops have been shook over you from the branches stirred by the sudden wing-clap of the cushat—and as for tooth-ache interfering with dinner, you eat as if your tusks had been just sharpened, and would not scruple to discuss nuts, upper- and lower-jaw-work fashion, against the best crackers in the country.”
WATERPROOF ZEAL.
I have the temerity to hold the opposite opinion on this “momentous question.” Some idea of the grounds on which I found that opinion, may be gathered from the following rhyming epistle, in which, “long, long ago,” I essayed to give a distant friend an account of a winter excursion to Dungeon Ghyll:—
Of our wet ride to Dungeon Ghyll
A sketch, you say, would much delight you,
And though I lack descriptive skill,
A sketch I'll do my best to write you.