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

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Page 116:-
from Cumberland; and Westmorland is left behind.
  Seathwaite and Seathwaite
  lost walker

We know nothing wilder in the district than the next two miles. These are the desolate hills in which the Duddon and the Esk take their rise; and Cockley Beck is the spot where the Duddon must be left, to cross over to the Esk. There is a farmhouse near the bridge, where horses can be refreshed, when a car comes this way, while travellers sit down by the stream to dinner. A melancholy and harassed traveller once came this way, whose adventure is still talked over in Eskdale and Borrowdale. A party of tourists, among whom were two sisters, were on the heights, intending to cross Esk Hause into Borrowdale, and to spend the night at Seathwaite,- the first settlement there. Now there is, as we have seen, another Seathwaite on the Duddon; and mistakes frequently arise between them. On Esk Hause, one of the ladies lost sight of her party behind some of the rocks scattered among the tarns there, and took a turn to the right instead of the left. A shepherd of whom she inquired her way to Seathwaite, pointed down to the Duddon valley; and that way she went till she found herself at Cockley Beck, when the old shepherd farmer who lived there was getting his supper in the dusk of the autumn evening. He used his best courtesy to induce her to stay till daylight: but she was bent on going at once,- so great would be her sister's terror. As she would not be persuaded, the old man went with her, putting his crust into his pocket. It was dark, and the lady was weary; and she was not aware what she was undertaking. After a long struggle, she fainted. The old
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