“At Evening.”
Crag over Ullswater are caught, that I have seen nothing better in all my wanderings abroad. Indeed, it ought to have been Lakeland’s own poet, and not Kingsley, who wrote
“While we see God’s signet
Fresh on English ground,
Why go gallivanting
With the nations round?”
It is hardly the province of a work like the present to treat of the geology of this beautiful district, but it may prove of interest to touch concisely upon the processes which have conduced to the formation of such a wonderful whole.
Why are Skiddaw and several of the hills in the north of Lakeland rounded in contour and possessed of no precipices worthy the name? What accounts for the cliffs and jagged outlines of the Langdale Pikes, the Pillar, or Scawfell? Wherefore all the various beautiful and retiring dales and side valleys, and, most pregnant question of all, whence came the Lakes themselves? No appreciative or thoughtful visitor but must have pondered upon these things and been somewhat puzzled. Many, I know, have dismissed the matter by concluding that the whole district is due to some vast upheaval of bygone ages. No such simple explanation will cover all the facts.
The earliest causes of Lakeland were complex and various. It has several times been submerged beneath the sea, when layer upon layer of mud and sediment was deposited to the thickness of thousands of feet. Skiddaw, Saddleback and others of our Northern fells are composed of these layers of soft rock. Weathering processes have rounded their contours and left to them the graceful flowing outlines which we now admire. Volcanoes also have played no unimportant part. Violent eruptions took place near Keswick and to the south of it and ejected material—boulders, huge masses of rock and fine dust—the greater part of which fell again almost vertically and deposited rock to the depth of at least twelve thousand feet. This has since been exposed to climatic influences, and been greatly reduced in bulk. The mountains of Borrowdale, Scawfell and Great Gable, amongst others, are formed of this volcanic débris; hence their hard, jagged and precipitous nature. A great part of them was ejected from Castle Head, the favourite view-point above Keswick, which is beyond doubt the crater of an extinct volcano.
Thus we see that the Lake District is mainly composed of two different kinds of rocks, one of a clayey and easily-moulded nature, the other of an unyielding volcanic type, jagged and angular. It is very greatly due to the juxtaposition of these two different types that the Lake District possesses such diversity of outline. So much for the rocks of which the mountains are formed. But how came they to assume their present shapes? The answer is fairly simple. The Lake District, as we know it to-day, was quite recently, that is in a geological sense (a little matter of ninety-three million years ago!) a vast dome-like tract situated about four-thousand feet above the level of the surrounding country. After it had finally emerged from the sea, rain in torrents fell upon this dome. Rivers were formed. These followed the usual downward course of water, and as they flowed they slowly wore definite channels for themselves. Down these channels they swept, carrying with them small pebbles and earth which wore away the softer rocks underneath. This went on for millions upon millions of years. Hundreds of streams flowing in various directions, eating the rock out and bearing it in minute particles to the sea, left the higher grounds untouched and it is these higher grounds which we now know as the mountains of Lakeland.
And now as regards the Lakes themselves. Influences into