button to main menu   West's Guide to the Lakes, 1778/1821

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Page 196:-
[in]volving their summits, resting on their sides, or descending to their base, and rolling among the vallies, as in a vast furnace.- When the winds are high, they roar among the cliffs and caverns, like a peal of thunder; then too the clouds are seen in vast bodies, sweeping along the hills in gloomy greatness, while the lake joins the tumult and tosses like a sea. But in calm weather, the whole scene becomes new; the lake is a perfect mirror; and the landscape in all its beauty, islands, fields, woods, rocks, and mountains, is seen inverted and floating on its surface.- I will now carry you to the top of a cliff, where if you dare approach the ridge, a new scene of astonishment presents itself, where the valley, lake, and islands seem lying at your feet, where this expanse of water appears diminished to a little pool, amidst the vast immeasurable objects that surround it: for here the summits of more distant hills appear beyond those you had already seen; and rising behind each other in successive ranges, and azure groups of craggy and broken steeps, form an immense and awful picture, which can only be expressed by the image of a tempestuous sea of mountains.- Let me now conduct you down again, to the valley, and conclude with one circumstance more, which is, that a walk by still moonlight (at which time the distant water-falls are heard in all their variety of sound) among these enchanting dales, opens a scene of such delicate beauty, repose, and solemnity, as exceeds all description.
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gazetteer links
button -- "Lake of Keswick" -- Derwent Water
button -- station, Derwent Water by boat
button -- station, Derwent Water by moonlight
button -- "Vale of Keswick" -- Vale of Keswick

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