button to main menu  Martineau's Complete Guide to the English Lakes, 1855

button title page
button previous page button next page
Page 158:-
[com]pelled to "try round" many times before they succeed. If darkness comes on, there is nothing to be done but to wait for daylight where they are. Another reason for having a guide is that the mountains around are not recognisable by their forms,- so great is the change caused by their being looked at from above. By map and compass they may be made out: but the summit is usually windy: and much time and trouble are saved by the information needed being ready at one's elbow.
The summit is bare of every thing that grows, except moss. Not a blade of grass is to be seen: and it follows that the herdsman and shepherd never have to come here after their charge. Blocks and inclined planes of slate rock, cushioned and draped with mosses, compose the peak. As for what is seen from it,- the best service to the stranger is still to copy portions of that "Letter to a friend" which Mr. Wordsworth published many years ago, and which is the best account we have of the greatest mountain excursion in England. The weather was, however, unusual. The guide said, when on the summit, "I do not know that in my whole life, I was ever, at any season of the year, so high upon the mountains on so calm a day." It was the seventh of October.
  view from Scawfell
  storm

"On the summit of the Pike," says the letter, "which we gained after much toil, though without difficulty, there was not a breath of air to stir even the papers containing our refreshment, as they lay spread out upon a rock. The stillness seemed to be not of this world. We paused, and kept silence to listen, and
gazetteer links
button -- "Scawfell" -- Sca Fell ascent 1855
button -- "Scawfell" -- Sca Fell
button next page

button to main menu Lakes Guides menu.