[Illustration: A GLIMPSE OF DERWENTWATER, FROM SCAFELL.]
North of Lancashire, in the counties of Westmoreland and Cumberland, is
the famous "Lake Country" of England. It does not cover a large area--in
fact, a good pedestrian can walk from one extremity of the region to the
other in a day--but its compact beauties have a charm of rugged outline
and luxuriant detail that in a condensed form reproduce the Alpine lakes
of Northern Italy. Derwentwater is conceded to be the finest of these
English lakes, but there is also great beauty in Windermere and
Ulleswater, Buttermere and Wastwater. The Derwent runs like a thread
through the glassy bead of Derwentwater, a magnificent oval lake set
among the hills, about three miles long and half that breadth, alongside
which rises the frowning Mount Skiddaw with its pair of rounded heads.
In entering the Lake Region from the Lancashire side we first come to
the pretty Windermere Lake, the largest of these inland sheets of water,
about ten miles long and one mile broad in the widest part. From Orrest
Head, near the village of Windermere, there is a magnificent view of the
lake from end to end, though tourists prefer usually to go to the
village of Bowness on the bank, where steamers start at frequent
intervals and make the circuit of the pretty lake. From Bowness the
route is by Rydal Mount, where the poet Wordsworth lived, to Koswick,
about twenty-three miles distant, on Derwentwater.
[Illustration: FALLS OF LODORE.]
The attractive Derwent flows down through the Borrowdale Valley past
Seathwaite, where for many a year there has been worked a famous mine of
plumbago: we use it for lead-pencils, but our English ancestors, while
making it valuable for marking their sheep, prized it still more highly
as a remedy for colic and other human ills. There are several
pencil-mills in the village, which, in addition to other claims for
fame, is noted as one of the rainiest spots in England, the annual
rainfall at Seathwaite sometimes reaching one hundred and eighty-two
inches. The Derwent flows on through a gorge past the isolated pyramidal
rock known as Castle Crag, and the famous Bowder Stone, which has fallen
into the gorge from the crags above, to the hamlet of Grange, where a
picturesque bridge spans the little river. We are told that the
inhabitants once built a wall across the narrowest part of this valley:
having long noticed the coincident appearance of spring and the cuckoo,
they rashly concluded that the latter was the cause of the former, and
that if they could only retain the bird their pleasant valley would
enjoy perpetual spring; they built the wall as spring lengthened into
summer, and with the autumn came the crisis. The wall had risen to a
considerable height when the cuckoo with the approach of colder weather
was sounding its somewhat asthmatic notes as it moved from tree to tree
down the valley; it neared the wall, and as the population held their
breath it suddenly flew over, and carried the spring away with it down
the Derwent. Judge of the popular disgust when the sages of that region
complainingly remarked that, having crossed but a few inches above the
topmost stones of the wall, if the builders had only carried it a course
or two higher the cuckoo might have been kept at home, and their valley
thus have enjoyed a perennial spring.
The Derwent flows on along its gorge, which has been slowly ground out
by a glacier in past ages, and enters the lake through the marshy, flat,
reedy delta that rather detracts from the appearance of its upper end.
Not far away a small waterfall comes tumbling over the crags among the
foliage; this miniature Niagara has a fame almost as great as the mighty
cataract of the New World, for it is the "Fall of Lodore," about which,
in answer to his little boy's question, "How does the water come down at
Lodore?" Southey wrote his well-known poem that is such a triumph of
versification, and from which this is a quotation:
"Flying and flinging, writhing and wringing,
Eddying and whisking, spouting and frisking,
Turning and twisting
Around and around, with endless rebound,
Smiting and fighting, a sight to delight in,
Confounding, astounding.
Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound;
All at once, and all o'er, with mighty uproar--
And this way the water conies down at Lodore."
Thus we reach the border of Derwentwater, nestling beneath the fells and
crags, as its miniature surrounding mountains are called. Little wooded
islets dimple the surface of the lake, in the centre being the largest,
St. Herbert's Island, where once that saint lived in a solitary cell: he
was the bosom friend of St. Cuthbert, the missionary of Northumberland,
and made an annual pilgrimage over the Pennine Hills to visit him;
loving each other in life, in death they were not divided, for
Wordsworth tells us that
"These holy men both died in the same hour."
Another islet is known as Lord's Island, where now the rooks are in full
possession, but where once was the home of the ill-fated Earl of
Derwentwater, who was beheaded in 1716 for espousing the Pretender's
cause. It is related that before his execution on Tower Hill he closely
viewed the block, and finding a rough place which might offend his neck,
he bade the headsman chip it off; this done, he cheerfully placed his
head upon it, gave the sign, and died: his estates were forfeited and
settled by the king on Greenwich Hospital. Castle Hill rises boldly on
the shore above Derwent Isle, where there is a pretty residence, and
every few years there is added to the other islets on the bosom of the
lake the "Floating Island," a mass of vegetable matter that becomes
detached from the marsh at the upper end. At Friar's Crag, beneath
Castle Hill, the lake begins to narrow, and at Portinscale the Derwent
flows out, receives the waters of the Greta coming from Keswick, and,
after flowing a short distance through the meadow-land, expands again
into Bassenthwaite Lake, a region of somewhat tamer yet still beautiful
scenery.
The town of Keswick stands some distance back from the border of
Derwentwater, and is noted as having been the residence of Southey. In
Greta Hall, an unpretentious house in the town, Southey lived for forty
years, dying there in 1843. He was laid to rest in the parish church of
Crosthwaite, just outside the town. At the pretty little church there is
a marble altar-tomb, the inscription on which to Southey's memory was
written by Wordsworth. Greta Hall was also for three years the home of
Coleridge, the two families dwelling under the same roof. Behind the
modest house rises Skiddaw, the bare crags of the rounded summits being
elevated over three thousand feet, and beyond it the hills and moors of
the Skiddaw Forest stretch northward to the Solway, with the Scruffel
Hill beyond. Upon a slope of the mountain, not far from Keswick, is a
Druids' circle, whose builders scores of centuries ago watched the mists
on Skiddaw's summit, as the people there do now, to foretell a change of
weather as the clouds might rise or fall, for they tell us that
"If Skiddaw hath a cap,
Scruffel wots full well of that."