After dinner, as the rain still continued, and we could not go further from home, we went to see an exhibition of pictures of the Lakes, a few doors distant. There were several views of one called Waswater, which is so little visited that our book of directions is silent concerning it. It seemed to us, however, to be of so striking a character, and so different from all which we have yet seen, that we consulted with our host concerning the distance and the best mode of getting there, and have accordingly planned a route which is to include it, and which we shall commence tomorrow.
The people here wear shoes with wooden soles. D., who had never seen any thing of the kind before, was inclined to infer from this that the inhabitants were behind the rest of England in improvement; till I asked him whether in a country so subject to rain as by experience we knew this to be, a custom which kept the feet dry ought not to be imputed to experience of its utility rather than to ignorance; and if, instead of their following the fashions of the south of England, the other peasantry would not do wisely in imitating them.
LETTER XLIII.
Borrodale.—Wasdale.—Waswater.—Calder Bridge.—Ennerdale.—Crummock Water.—Lake of Buttermere.—Lakes on the Mountains.
Friday.
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 St Anthony.
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.