in greater numbers here, perhaps, than
anywhere in the north country— and the eggs
and bacon (again), and the oat-cake, and the
excellent honey, we started to spend our day
in Wastdale.

The hamlet, consisting of five houses, is six
miles from the little village of Strands, and
about three times that distance, even across
the fells, from anything like a town; but it
is not behindhand in civilisation. There is a
church— less, surely, than any church save
those upon mantel-pieces, with a slit in the
roof for missionary coppers— and a schoolhouse
smaller still. William Ritson, who has
much natural cleverness, and a simple honesty
such as no education can bestow, laments
that he is no " scholard" himself, allowing
that he should not get on very well without
his gude wife's larning; but the next
generation is erudite enough. Upon seeing an
apparition afar off, of a person in a black coat
—a rare bird in such a place, and like unto a
black swan we asked of a native what it
might mean. " Yon's priest!" was the reply;
that old designation still clinging to the
clergy in these out-of-the-way fell parishes.

It was not the first visit of two of our
party to Wastdale, so we took our way
towards Pease Gill, under Scawfell Pike,
without any hesitation. The guide-books
of the lake district place the highest waterfall
upon Buttermere, and call it one
hundred and sixty feet; but it is plain that
their authors never saw Greta Forces; they
fall down from those roofless, rocky grandeurs
yonder, which bold Professor Wilson calls
"the devil's suite of show apartments in
Scawfell," that really (now he has mentioned
it) have very much an appearance of that
kind, and there were six gentlemen ushers of
his— ravens— in his outer chambers during
the whole of our visit.

"Now, don't— don't be a fool!" cried the
rest of us, while Hotspur would come down
the shelving tongue which separates these
two roaring ghylls that take their dreadful
leaps upon either hand. I, for my part, could
not look at him; he never could get over
that neck of land where it narrows between
the abysms, I felt sure, slippery as it was
with recent rains, and affording only one
huge stone for a certain footing. He was
nearing it, I knew, from my friends' silence.
Presently a sharp cry arose, and the sound of
a heavy body falling, striking as it fell
against the rocks, and so into the torrent.
My knees were loosened, my brain whirled
round and round, and I felt positively sick
with horror.

"Jim-a-long-a-Josey! " hollaed Hotspur,
from a place of safety, and by way of
encouragement to the bounding stone. He had
but just touched this reliable-looking monster
with his foot when it served him that trick,
and he had had to creep down backwards
upon hands and knees over the difficult spot.
However, this incident suggested to us one
of the most glorious pleasures which I ever
experienced; an enjoyment which not the
metropolis of the world could have afforded
us, and, indeed, few places in England so
well as Wastdale Head. Passing on to Pease
Gill, close by where the ravine is many
hundred feet sheer, and the torrent fills up
the gully under a huge natural archway, we
took up our station a long distance up the
steep side leading to the chasm, and using
indiscriminately our sticks and legs for
screws, loosened the mightiest stones from
their moist beds, and set them rolling. It
was hard work enough with the very large
ones, it is true; but what a rich repayment!
The huge mass set on end first revolves
slowly, then faster, then faster, then bounds,
then leaps like a very antelope, leaps higher
and broader, setting this and that boulder,
almost as large as itself, in motion likewise,
leading a great army of boulders, bounding
and splitting, to the very edge of the precipice,
then springing right out into space—
and hark!— perhaps crashing on some unseen
projection, and rending the very fibres of the
rock, or falling, after a long silence, plomb
into the centre of the abysm— into the depths
of the mountain-stream.

At first we were too drunk with the new
wine to proceed scientifically; it was grand
enough to deafen ourselves with the sullen
echoes which we forced out of grey Scawfell,
to listen to that solemnest of sounds, the
"noise of rocks thrown down " a steep place
into the void; but presently we went about
'the matter more designedly; we began to
calculate to a tolerable nicety what road
these terrible fellows would travel, what
track they would lay bare and ruinous upon
their pitiless way, and the sight of the
destruction which they wrought at random
set us upon more ravage and better planned;
upon the verge of the precipices were many
trees of various hardy kinds, but chiefly
mountain ashes, growing out, some quite
horizontally, some at an inclination with their
tops, and part of their trunks exposed to us;
we directed our natural artillery for the
especial destruction of these beautiful gifts of
nature, the only peaceful features of the
rugged scene; of one fit a time of course,
and I am ashamed to say that we killed two
of them upon the spot, and left a third in an
almost hopeless condition. It took a very long
time, however, to accomplish this; the
missiles sometimes missed their mark altogether,
or sheared a branch or two off, as though they
had been cut with a knife, or leapt right over
the very tree-top with too high a range; or,
using up all our shot and shell in that particular
battery, we had often to bring our
material from a distance, and with the greatest
labour; but we enjoyed ourselves at it most
thoroughly, nor can I imagine a more poetical
and filting means of defending one's native land
than these similar weapons which the Tyrolese
provided for their Austrian invaders.