THE DERWENT AT CROSTHWAITE (p. [298]).
The CRAKE river falls into the Leven so near its mouth that it might almost claim to be a tributary. But it is independent and apart in its character and mission. It belongs to Coniston Water, as Leven belongs to Windermere; and the commonplace scenery of its short course, with its trio of bridges, is another mark of similarity. All that is noticeable around Coniston lake is at the upper portion. The steamer pier is at Waterhead, the village and station are half a mile inland; the Old Man of Coniston (2,633 feet), whom generations of climbers have been proud to attack, is in the same direction, and Yewdale and its tarn, howes, crags and fells are towards the north. The coaching traveller may feast his eyes upon the lancet-shaped water, some five miles long from Schoolbeck at the upper or from the Crake at the lower terminal, and of a uniform width of about half a mile; while the upward trip from Lake Bank affords clear and happy views of the mountains of which the Old Man is the irrepressible head. Off the high road opposite Coniston Hall, a farmhouse once the Westmorland seat of the Le Fleming family, is Brantwood, associated with the names of Gerald Massey, poet and self-made man, of Linton the engraver, and of Ruskin, great as any of those giants of literature whose names are linked with Lakeland.
The river DUDDON as a thing of beauty has often been overpraised, no less an authority than Wordsworth setting the example when, in his “Scenery of the Lakes,” he says it may be compared, such and so varied are its beauties, with any river of equal length in any country. Yet there are streams in Wales, and even in the north of England, which their admirers would not hesitate to rank above it. It rises upon Wrynose Fell, on the confines of Westmorland, Cumberland, and Lancashire, and for twenty-five miles or so is the boundary between the two latter counties. It possesses, no doubt, a certain picturesqueness, having its wild mountain phases, its torrents roaring around obstructive rocks, its passage through fertile meadows, and at last its slow ending through the everlasting sands to an open outlet into the Irish Sea at the north end of Walney Island.
Donnerdale, with Seathwaite as its most notable centre, has received much attention because Wordsworth (from whom we cannot, and would not if we could, escape in Lakeland) made it the subject of thirty-four sonnets, dedicated to his brother Christopher. The poet evidently set himself down to glorify this particular district by prolonged observation—
“... For Duddon, long-beloved Duddon, is my theme.”
In the course of his sonnets he sings its dwarf willows and ferny brakes; its sullen moss and craggy mound; its green alders, ash and birch trees, and sheltering pines; its hamlets under verdant hills; its barns and byres, and spouting mills. Nor does he fail to celebrate the gusts that lash its matted forests. When the gale becomes too obstreperous, then, reckless of angry Duddon sweeping by, the poet turns him to the warm hearth, to
“Laugh with the generous household heartily
At all the merry pranks of Donnerdale.”