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Page 93:-
Dumfries. Lancaster Castle and Carlisle Cathedral in the
same landscape! and Snowdon and Criffel nodding to each
other! Ingleborough, in Yorkshire, looking at Skiddaw over
the whole of Westmorland that lies between; with the Isle of
Man as a resting place for the glance on its way to Ireland!
St. Bees Head, with the noiseless waves dashing against the
red rocks, being almost within reach as it were! And, as for
Scawfell, Helvellyn, and Saddleback, they stand up like
comrades, close round about. Charles Lamb was no great lover
of mountains: but he enjoyed what he saw here. "O! its fine
black head," he wrote of Skiddaw, "and the bleak air atop of
it, with a prospect of mountains all about and about, making
you giddy; and then, Scotland afar off, and the border
countries, so famous in song and ballad! It is a day that
will stand out like a mountain, I am sure, in my life!"
"Bleak" the air is indeed "atop," - exposed as the summit is
to the seawinds. If the stranger desires to take a leisurely
view, he must trouble his guide or his pony with a railway
wrapper, or something of the sort, to enable him to stand
his ground. The descent may be made, for the sake of
variety, by a road through Milbeck and the pretty village of
Applethwaite; or by descending the north side of the
mountain, and coming out upon the road, just north of the
village of Bassenthwaite.
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