"After all, it is upon the mind which a traveller brings along with him, CARLISLE: PUBLISHED BY CHARLES THURNAM: INTRODUCTION. THE Lake district extends over a portion of the three counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire, being bounded on the south and west by the sea, which combines beautifully from many elevated points with the inland scenery, and occupying an area of about thirty miles in diameter. It consists of large masses or clusters of mountains, generally terminating in one aspiring and pre-eminent point, with the intermediate valleys occupied either by lakes and their subsidiary tarns, or by winding rivers. The chief nuclei of these clusters are, Skiddaw and Blencathra, Helvellyn, Fairfield, Coniston Old Man, Blackcomb, Scafell, Gable, Red Pike, Grasmoor, Grisdale Pike, and the Langdale Pikes. Many noble and commanding mountains rise around these, rivalling them in height and grandeur, but A still serving as large buttresses only. In the presentation of endlessly-diversified forms, these Mountains yield to none, however individually inferior they may be, owing to their being seldom seen in a detached point of view; although, on the other hand, they have thus the advantage of forming combinations at once grand and sublime, towering above each other, or rising in ridges, like the mighty billows of the ocean. Their general covering is a rich green turf, affording excellent pasturage to large flocks of sheep. The brown of the dying fern, and the purple hue of the heather, add to the variety no less than the beauty of the tints. On some, rocks predominate; others have their fronts torn and ploughed up by bursts and speats of rain, exposing and laying bare the soil. The Valleys which lie between these masses, are not formed like those of Wales, by the sloping sides of the mountains meeting, so as to leave little room for any thing but a terrace road and rugged bed of a river; but they wind amongst the hills with intricate and abrupt turnings, and in the level bottoms, either a lake quietly rests, or wooded hows and little knolls, on which the cottages are perched, rise out of green meadows and smiling corn fields. It is a great recommendation also to these vales, that each has its peculiar character, no one, taken as a whole, bearing much resemblance to any other. There is, however, sometimes a likeness in the mountains, but more in their parts, considered in detail, than in their whole composition, arising from the similarity of their geological construction. There is, moreover, in all the engulphed vales somewhat of a melancholy solemnity, caused by the grandeur of the surrounding hills, and the scarcity of inhabitants. The forms of some of the Lakes have been objected to, as too much resembling those of rivers, especially when viewed from such a height as to embrace the whole lake at once. But this faulty appearance vanishes when they are seen from their shores, or from some moderate elevation, sufficient to serve as a naturally appropriate foreground. Then their boundary lines, boldly indented with A 2 |