companiments, are nevertheless singularly well adapted to the pallet.

To the untutored view a greater or more imposing display is necessary to afford pleasure, When a well proportioned quantity of water is passed over the unequal surface of a richly coloured rock, which thus aided, glows with borrowed brightness and augmented beauty on the delighted wanderer's gaze, the spectacle is replete with dazzling fascination, and the mind most avaricious of enjoyment can covet no more. Such has been the treat which here has occasionally fallen to the share of the writer, who has witnessed every appearance on this mountain's side, from the pretty timid water spout to the mighty roaring cataract. After successive days of heavy rain, the hollows before mentioned, become insufficient to receive the mighty volume of water which descends from the impending clouds upon them, and the maddening torrents are hurled from their rugged elevation with the awful roar of thunder: the grey rocks, occasionally tinted by pervading lichens, and still more beautifully enriched by many greened mosses resembling cushions of soft velvet, produce combinations of colour the most animated and superb, which, contrasted with the milky hue of the convulsed waters, form a picture of transcendent sublimity and beauty.

Few districts seem to have been so subject to the numerous consequences of water spouts as the neighbourhoods of Saddleback and Helvel

lyn. Several have fallen within the last fifteen years. On the fourth of August 1806 one descended ten miles and a half from Ambleside, which did considerable damage.

The following interesting account of one which happened about the middle of the last century, is copied from Mr. Hutchinson.

"This remarkable fall of water, which happened at nine o'clock in the evening of the 22d of August, 1749, began with most terrible thunder, and incessant lightening, the preceding day having been extremely hot and sultry. The inhabitants, for two hours before the breaking of the cloud, heard a strange noise, like the wind blowing in the tops of high trees. It is thought to have been a spout, or larger body of water, which, by the lightening incessantly rarifying the air, broke at once on the tops of the mountains, and descended upon the valley below, which is about three miles long, half a mile broad, and lies nearly east and west, being closed on the south and north sides with prodigious high, steep, and rocky mountains. Legbert Fells, on the north side, received almost the whole cataract, for the spout did not extend above a mile in length: it chiefly swelled four small brooks, but to so amazing a degree, that the largest of them, called Catcheety Gill, swept away a mill and other edifices, in five minutes, leaving the place where they stood covered with fragments of rocks and rubbish, three or four yards deep, insomuch that one of the millstones could not be found. During the violence

of the storm, the fragments of rocks which rolled down the mountains choked up the old course of this brook; but the water forcing its way through a shivery rock, formed a chasm four yards wide, and about eight or nine deep. The brooks lodged such quantities of gravel and sand on the meadows, that they were irrecoverably lost. Many large pieces of rocks were carried a considerable way into the fields, some larger than a team of ten horses could move, and one of them measuring nineteen yards about."

Mr. Clarke, in his description of these lakes, gives the following description of this awful in

undation.

"In the evening of the 22d of August, noises were heard in the air, gusts of wind at intervals burst forth with great violence, and were almost instantaneously succeeded by a dead calm. In this country the inhabitants are accustomed to the bosom-winds, and whirlwinds, the howling of the tempest among the rocks and mountains gives them no serious alarm: on this evening the inhabitants went to repose at their usual hour. About one in the morning, a heavy rain began, and before four o'clock the whole face of the lower country was covered with water, many feet in depth: several houses were beat down by the torrents, and others filled with sand to the first story. Legberthwaite mill was totally destroyed, and not one stone left upon another; even the mill-stones were washed away, one of them has not yet been discovered, the other was found at some considerable dis

tance.

One

The affrighted inhabitants climbed the roofs of the houses for preservation, and there waited for the subsiding of the waters. Mounsey, of Wallthwaite, when he came down stairs in the morning, found his doors burst open by the violence of the floods, and utensils and timber floating in his lower rooms. At Lobthwaite, the most remarkable vestiges of this inundation are to be seen; stones piled upon each other, to the height of ten or twelve yards, many of which are upwards of twenty ton weight. The distance between Lobthwaite and Wolf Crag is not more than a mile and a haif, and very little water could be collected above Wolf Crag; the fall of rain or water spout did not extend above eight miles, so that it is astonishing such a quantity of water could fall in so small a space of country. At Fornside, all was devastation; trees were torn up by the roots, and immense beds of wreck and gravel covered the lands, whilst at Mill Fell, three miles distant, the country men were leading home their corn all night, in fair weather; a practice not unusual when there are signs of a change."

All along the vale of St. John, from the tenth mile-stone to the foot of the hill half a mile beyond the eleventh, there is a most captivating succession of scenery.

Near the Smithy from the top of the hill, the retrospect is over St. John's Vale to the shoulders of Helvellyn, for his head cannot here be This view, though not without interest,

seen.

is greatly inferor to that from the neighbourhood of the tenth mile-stone.

On the left, a little beyond the Smithy, is a capital farm house, called Bridge End, well shaded by stately trees, with the hill called the How, towering over the whole, and making a a pretty composition, From this place the road is down hill to Smeathwaite Bridge, which is over the river Greta, or, as it is called, the Bure, which runs from Leaths Water (or according to Dr. Burn, Braik Water) through part of the vale of St. John, to Keswick, joining the river Derwent, a quarter of a mile below the lake.

Having passed Smeathwaite Bridge, a road on the right leads down St. John's Vale to Threlkeld: another road turns off to the same place at the distance of eleven miles and a quarter from Ambleside.

From Smeathwaite Bridge the Keswick road is steep, but as it rises, there is a pleasant back view of Helvellyn, with Bridge End, and its encircling woods. From the top of the hill, crossing the common, and the dale, the road is seen, having on its left that valuable bed of fuel, called Shoulthwaite Moss. A little beyond the twelfth mile-stone the road from the western side of Leaths Water joins the turn-pike road.

Naddle Fell, which is on the right, is of a moderate height, and shews a craggy surface, but it is neither so lofty nor so interesting as the Bend, a hill rising above the moss on the left.