|
|
|
Page 307:-
bold enough to wonder, that the steeps near the beginning of the
mountain had excited any anxiety.
At length, passing the skirts of the two points of Skiddaw which
are nearest to Derwent water, we approached the third and
loftiest, and then perceived that their steep sides, together
with the ridges which connect them, were entirely covered near
the summits with a whitish shivered slate, which threatens to
slide down them with every gust of wind. The broken state of this
slate makes the present summits seem like ruins of others - a
circumstance as extraordinary in appearance as difficult to be
accounted for.
The ridge on which we passed from the neighbourhood of the second
summit to the third, was narrow, and the eye reached, on each
side, down the whole extent of the mountain following, on the
left, the rocky precipices that impend over the lake of
Bassenthwaite, and looking on the right, into the glens of
Saddleback, far, far below. But the prospects that burst upon us
from every part of the vast horizon, when we had gained the
summit, were such as we had scarcely dared to hope for, and must
now rather venture to enumerate then (sic) to describe.
We stood on a pinnacle, commanding the whole dome of the sky. The
prospects below, each of which had been before considered
separately as a great scene, were now miniature parts of the
immense landscape.- To the north lay, like a map, the vast tract
of low country which extends between Bassenthwaite and the Irish
Channel, marked with the silver circles of the river Derwent, in
its progress from the lake. Whitehaven, and its white coast, were
distinctly seen; and Cockermouth seemed almost under the eye. A
long blackish line, more to the west, resembling a faintly-formed
cloud, was said by the Guide to be the Isle of Man, who, however,
had the honesty to confess, that the mountains of Down, in
Ireland, which sometimes have been thought visible,
|
