button to main menu  Description of Sixty Studies from Nature, pp.112-113

button title page
button previous page button next page
page 112:-
[south-]west of its foot, the lake is of an irregular figure, and composed of three unequal reaches, the middle of which is somewhat larger than the northern one; the shortest is seen from the inn at Patterdale, and is not half the length of either of the others: Ulls Water is less unequal in its breadth than the other lakes, it is in many places not more than half a mile across, but seldom exceeds three quarters; it is less than Windermere, but larger than the rest of the English lakes.
Ulls Water lies engulphed at the feet of majestic mountains, which rise sublimely from the valley: Place Fell descends shivering into the lake almost perpendicularly from a vast height; it skirts the lake from Birk Fell Force higher than its head. The opposite mountains are less uniform, their summits are removed to various and greater distances from the water, and
page 113:-
the rocks project from their surfaces in a style of superior grandeur.
Were these mountains divested of wood, they would exhibit a vastness and sublimity rivalled only by those of Wast Water.
Nothing can exceed the dresses and the decorations of this sublimity; the whole space from Gow-barrow to the inn at Patterdale is one rich scene of vegetation; oak, ash, birch, alder, and other trees of stately growth, and in the wildest luxuriance, undulating, and impending over the rocky protuberances every where starting from the mountains, render this the loveliest ride amongst the lakes.
  journeying
Those who post through this country see little: Many travellers would fly as on "the wings of the wind," unless opposed by such stubborn bits of stuff as Kirkstone and the Raise, or by Whinlatter: with how much more of refined pleasure would a tour be per-
button next page

button to main menu Lakes Guides menu.