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

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Page 161:-
Hail to thy beams, O Sun!- for this display,
What, glorious orb, can I repay?
The thanks of an unprostituted muse [1].
  station, Watermillock
  cannon
  echoes

The navigators of this lake find much amusement by discharging guns, or small cannon, at certain stations. The effect is indeed truly curious, for the report is reverberated from rock to rock, promontory, cavern, and hill, with every variety of sound; now dying away upon the ear, and again returning like peals of thunder, and thus re-echoed seven times distinctly. [2]- Opposite to Watermillock is one of these stations.
[1] Ode to the Sun, page 18. The whole of this ode is inserted in the Addenda, Article IV.
[2] This effect is thus described by Mr. Hutchinson:
'Whilst we sat to regale, the barge put off from shore to a station where the finest echoes were to be obtained from the surrounding mountains. This vessel was provided with six brass cannon mounted on swivels;- on discharging one of these pieces, the report was echoed from the opposite rocks, where by reverberation it seemed to roll from cliff to cliff, and return through every cave and valley, till the decreasing tumult gradually died away upon the ear.
'The instant it had ceased, the sound of every distant water-fall was heard, but for an instant only, for the momentary stillness was interrupted by the returning echo on the hills behind; where the report was repeated like a peal of thunder bursting over our heads, continuing for several seconds, flying from haunt to haunt, till once more the sound gradually declined;- again the voice of the water-falls possessed the interval - till, to the right, the more distant thunder arose upon some other mountain, and seemed to take its way up every winding dell and creek, sometimes behind, on this side, or on that, in wonderous speed running its dreadful course; when the echo reached the mountains, within the line and channel of the breeze, it was heard at once on the right and left, at the extremities of the lake.- In this manner was the report of every discharge re-echoed seven times distinctly.'
Excursion to the Lakes, page 65.
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