After ascending the laborious crags and precipices of Furness-fell,
enlivened, however, by frequent views of the southern end of
Windermere, the road immediately descends the opposite side of the
mountain, which shuts out the beautiful scenery of the lake; but
the prospect soon after opens to other mountains of Furness, in the
distance, which revive the expectation of such sublimity as we had
lately regretted, and to Esthwait-water in the valley below. This is
a narrow, pleasant lake, about half a mile broad and two miles long,
with gradual hills, green to their tops, rising round the margin; with
plantations and pastures alternately spreading along the easy shores,
and white farms scattered sparingly upon the slopes above. The water
seems to glide through the quiet privacy of pleasure-grounds; so fine
is the turf on its banks, so elegant its copses, and such an air of
peace and retirement prevails over it. A neat white village lies at the
feet of the hills near the head of the lake; beyond it is the gray town
of Hawkshead, with its church and parsonage on an eminence commanding
the whole valley. Steep hills rise over them, and, more distant, the
tall heads of the Coniston-fells, dark and awful, with a confusion of
other mountains.
Hawkshead, thus delightfully placed, is an antient, but small town,
with a few good houses, and a neat town-house, lately built by
subscriptions, of which the chief part was gratefully supplied by
London merchants, who had been educated at the free school here; and
this school itself is a memorial of gratitude, having been founded by
Archbishop Sandys for the advantage of the town, which gave him birth.
Near Hawkshead are the remains of the house, where the Abbot of Furness
"kept residence by one or more monks, who performed divine service
and other parochial duties in the neighbourhood." There is still a
court-room over the gateway, "where the bailiff of Hawkshead held
court, and distributed justices in the name of the abbot."
From the tremendous steeps of the long fell, which towers over
Hawkshead, astonishing views open to the distant vales and mountains of
Cumberland; overlooking all the grotesque summits in the neighbourhood
of Grasmere, the fells of Borrowdale in the furthest distance,
Langdale-pikes, and several small lakes, seen gleaming in the bosom of
the mountains. Before us, rose the whole multitude of Coniston-fells;
of immense height and threatening forms, their tops thinly darkened
with thunder mists, and, on the left, Furness-fells sinking towards the
bay, which Ulverston sands form for the sea.
As we advanced, Coniston-fells seemed to multiply, and became still
more impressive, till, having reached at length the summit of the
mountain, we looked down upon Thurston-lake immediately below, and saw
them rising abruptly round its northern end in somewhat of the sublime
attitudes and dark majesty of Ullswater. A range of lowers rocks,
nearer to the eye, exhibited very peculiar and grotesque appearance,
coloured scars and deep channels marking their purple sides, as if they
had been rifted by an earthquake.
The road descends the flinty steeps towards the eastern bank of the
lake, that spreads a surface of six miles in length and generally three
quarters of a mile in breadth, not winding in its course, yet much
indented with bays, and presenting nearly its whole extent at once to
the eye. The grandest features are the fells, that crown its northern
end, not distantly and gradually, like those of Windermere, nor varied
like them with magnificent colouring, but rising in haughty abruptness,
dark, rugged and stupendous, within a quarter of a mile of the margin,
and shutting out all prospect of other mountain-summits. At their feet,
pastures spread a bright green to the brim of the lake. Nearly in
the centre of these fells, which open in a semicircle to receive the
lake, a cataract descends, but its shining line is not of a breadth
proportioned to the vastness of its perpendicular fall. The village
of Coniston is sweetly seated under shelter of the rocks; and, at a
distance beyond, on the edge of the water, the antient hall, or priory,
shews its turret and ivyed ruins among old woods. The whole picture is
reflected in the liquid mirror below. The gay, convivial chorus, or
solemn vesper, that once swelled along the lake from these consecrated
walls, and awakened, perhaps, the enthusiasm of the voyager, while
evening stole upon the scene, is now contrasted by desolation and
profound repose, and, as he glides by, he hears only the dashing of his
oars, or the surge beating on the shore.
This lake appeared to us one of the most charming we had seen. From
the sublime mountains, which bend round its head, the heights, on
either side, decline towards the south into waving hills, that form
its shores, and often stretch in long sweeping points into the water,
generally covered with tufted wood, but sometimes with the tender
verdure of pasturage. The tops of these woods were just embrowned
with autumn, and contrasted well with other slopes, rough and heathy,
that rose above, or fell beside them to the water's brink, and added
force to the colouring, which the reddish tints of decaying fern, the
purple bloom of heath, and the bright golden gleams of broom, spread
over these elegant banks. Their hues, the graceful undulations of the
marginal hills and bays, the richness of the woods, the solemnity of
the northern fells and the deep repose, that pervades the scene, where
only now and then a white cottage or a farm lurks among the trees, are
circumstances, which render Thurston-lake one of the most interesting
and, perhaps, the most beautiful of any in the country.
The road undulates over copsy hills, and dips into shallow vallies
along the whole of the eastern bank, seldom greatly elevated above
the water, or descending to a level with it, but frequently opening
to extensive views of its beauties, and again shrouding itself in
verdant gloom. The most impressive pictures were formed by the fells,
that crowd over the upper end of the lake, and which, viewed from a
low station, sometimes appeared nearly to enclose that part of it. The
effect was then astonishingly grand, particularly about sun-set, when
the clouds, drawing upwards, discovered the utmost summits of these
fells, and a tint of dusky blue began to prevail over them, which
gradually deepened into night. A line of lower rocks, that extend
from these, are, independently of the atmosphere, of a dull purple,
and their shaggy forms would appear gigantic in almost any other
situation. Even here, they preserve a wild dignity, and their attitudes
somewhat resemble those at the entrance of Borrowdale; but they are
forgotten, when the eye is lifted to the solemn mountains immediately
above. These are rich in slate quarries, and have some copper mines;
but the latter were closed, during the civil wars of the last century,
having been worked, as we are told in the descriptive language of the
miners, from _the day to the evening end_, forty fathom, and to the
_morning end_ seven score fathom; a figurative style of distinguishing
the western and eastern directions of the mine. The lake, towards the
lower end, narrows and is adorned by one small island; but here the
hills of the eastern shore soar into fells, some barren, craggy and
nearly perpendicular, others entirely covered with coppice-wood. Two of
these, rising over the road, gave fine relief to each other, the one
shewing only precipices of shelving rock, while its rival aspired with
woods, that mantled from the base to the summit, consisting chiefly of
oak, ash and holly. Not any lake, that we saw, is at present so much
embellished with wood as Thurston. All the mountains of _High_ and the
vallies of _Low Furness_ were, indeed, some centuries ago, covered with
forests, part of which was called the Forest of Lancaster; and these
were of such entangled luxuriance as to be nearly impenetrable in many
tracts. Here, wolves, wild boars, and a remarkably large breed of deer,
called Leghs, the heads of which have frequently been found buried at
a considerable depth in the soil, abounded. So secure an asylum did
these animals find in the woods of High Furness, that, even after the
low lands were cleared and cultivated, shepherds were necessary to
guard the flocks from the ravages of the wolves. Towards the end of the
thirteenth century, the upper forests also were nearly destroyed.
In winter, the shepherds used to feed their stocks with the young
sprouts of ash and holly, a custom said to be still observed; the sheep
coming at the call of the shepherd and assembling round the holly-tree
to receive from his hand the young shoots cropped for them [2]. Whenever
the woods are felled, which is too frequently done, to supply fuel for
the neighbouring furnaces, the holly is still held sacred to the flocks
of these mountains.
[2] West's "Antiquities of Furness."
Soon after passing the island, the road enters the village of
Nibthwaite, rich only in situation; for the cottages are miserable. The
people seemed to be as ignorant as poor; a young man knew not how far
it was to Ulverston, or as he called it Ulson, though it was only five
miles.
On the point of a promontory of the opposite shore, embosomed in
ancient woods, the chimnies and pointed roof of a gray mansion look
out most interestingly. The woods open partially to the north, and
admit a view of the _Swiss_ scenery at the head of the lake, in its
fine position. On the other sides, the oaks so embower the house and
spread down the rocks, as scarcely to allow it a glimpse of the water
bickering between the dark foliage below.
At Nibthwaite, the lake becomes narrow and gradually decreases, till it
terminates at Lowick-bridge, where it glides away in the little river
Crake, which descends to Ulverston sands. We stopped upon the bridge to
take a last view of the scene; the distant fells were disappearing in
twilight, but the gray lake gleamed at their base. From the steeps of
a lofty mountain, that rose near us on the right, cattle were slowly
descending for the night, winding among the crags, sometimes stopping
to crop the heath, or broom, and then disappearing for a moment behind
the darker verdure of yews, that grew in knots upon the cliffs.
It was night before we reached Ulverston. The wind sounded mournfully
among the hills and we perceived our approach to the sea only by the
faint roaring of the tide, till from a brow, whence the hills open on
either hand with a grand sweep, we could just discern the gray surface
of the sea-bay, at a distance below, and then, by lights that glimmered
in the bottom, the town of Ulverston, lying not far from the shore and
screened on the north by the heights, from which we were to descend.
Ulverston is a neat but ancient town, the capital and chief port of
Furness. The road from it to the majestic ruin of Furness Abbey lies
through Low Furness, and loses the general wildness and interest of
the country, except where now and then the distant retrospect of the
mountains breaks over the tame hills and regular enclosures, that
border it.
About a mile and a half on this side of the Abbey, the road passes
through Dalton, a very ancient little town, once the capital of Low
Furness, and rendered so important by its neighbourhood to the Abbey,
that Ulverston, the present capital, could not then support the weekly
market, for which it had obtained a charter. Dalton, however, sunk
with the suppression of its neighbouring patrons, and is now chiefly
distinguished by the pleasantness of its situation, to which a church,
built on a bold ascent, and the remains of a castle, advantageously
placed for the command of the adjoining valley, still attach some
degree of dignity. What now exists of the latter is one tower, in a
chamber of which the Abbot of Furness held his secular Court; and the
chamber was afterwards used as a gaol for debtors, till within these
few years, when the dead ruin released the living one. The present
church-yard and the scite of this castle are supposed to have been
included within the limits of a _castellum_, built by Agricola, of the
fosse of which there are still some faint vestiges.
Beneath the brow, on which the church and tower stand, a brook flows
through a narrow valley, that winds about a mile and a half to the
Abbey. In the way thither we passed the entrance of one of the very
rich iron mines, with which the neighbourhood abounds; and the deep red
tint of the soil, that overspreads almost the whole country between
Ulverston and the monastery, sufficiently indicates the nature of the
treasures beneath.
In a close glen, branching from this valley, shrouded by winding banks
clumped with old groves of oak and chesnut, we found the magnificent
remains of