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Derwent Isle, is the other of the four larger islands.
Lord's Isle was once a part of the mainland. The Ratcliffes
cut a fosse, in the feudal times, and set up a drawbridge.
When the young Lord Derwentwater was captured for being
"out" in 1715, his lady escaped, and saved her liberty and
the family jewels (to use them on behalf of her husband) by
clambering up one of the clefts of Wallabarrow Crag, since
called the Lady's Rake. Every where are there traces of the
unhappy family; even in the sky, where the aurora borealis
is sometimes called, to this day, Lord Derwentwater's
lights, because it was particularly brilliant the night
after his execution.
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The lake is about three miles long, and, at its broadest
part, about a mile and a half wide. Its waters are
singularly clear, and its surface often unruffled as a
mirror. Then it reflects the surrounding shores with
marvellous beauty of effect,- from the bare crest of the
crag and peak of the mountain to the grassy knoll and
overhanging birch. Pike, trout, and perch abound in the
lake; but not char, which requires deeper water. The
Floating Island, whose appearance is announced in the
newspapers at intervals of a few years, has obtained more
celebrity than it deserves. It is a mass of soil and decayed
vegetation, which rises when distended with gases, and sinks
again when it has parted with them at the surface. Such is
the explanation given by philosophers of this piece of
natural magic, which has excited so much sensation during
successive generations. Sometimes it comes up a mere patch,
and sometimes measuring as much as an acre.
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