Upon a semicirque of turf-clad ground,
A mass of rock, resembling, as it lay
Right at the foot of that moist precipice,
A stranded ship with keel upturned, that rests
Careless of winds and waves.
THE BOWDER STONE.
The most modest estimate of the weight of the Bowder Stone was 1,771 tons, and we measured it as being 21 yards long and 12 yards high. This immense mass of rock had evidently fallen from the hills above. We climbed up the great stone by means of a ladder or flight of wooden steps erected against it to enable visitors to reach the top. But the strangest thing about it was the narrow base on which the stone rested, consisting merely of a few narrow ledges of rock. We were told that fifty horses could shelter under it, and that we could shake hands with each other under the bottom of the stone, and although we could not test the accuracy of the statement with regard to the number of horses it could shelter, we certainly shook hands underneath it. To do this we had to lie down, and it was not without a feeling of danger that we did so, with so many hundreds of tons of rock above our heads, and the thought that if the rock had given way a few inches we should have been reduced to a mangled mass of blood and bones. Our friendly greeting was not of long duration, and we were pleased when the ceremony was over. There is a legend that in ancient times the natives of Borrowdale endeavoured to wall in the cuckoo so that they might have perpetual spring, but the story relates that in this they were not entirely successful, for the cuckoo just managed to get over the wall. We now continued our journey to find the famous Yew Trees of Borrowdale, which Wordsworth describes in one of his pastorates as "those fraternal four of Borrowdale":
But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal four of Borrowdale,