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at by either of the two writers (in fact, there was too much reason to fear that 
it had been the lingering death of famine)—not ,the personal sufferings of the 
principal figure in the little drama—but the sublime and mysterious fidelity of 
the secondary figure, his dog; this it was which won the imperishable remem- 
brance of the vales, and which accounted for the profound interest that immedi- 
ately gathered round the incidents—an interest that still continues to hallow the 
memory of the dog. Not the dog of Athens, nor the dog of Pompeii, so well 
deserve the immortality of history or verse. Mr. Gough was a young man, 
belonging to the Society of Friends, who took an interest in the mountain 
scenery of the Lake District, both as a lover of the picturesque and as a man of 
science. It was in this latter character, I believe, that he had ascended 
Helvellyn at the time when he met with his melancholy end. From his 
familiarity with the ground—for he had been an annual visitant to the Lakes— 
he slighted the usual precaution of taking a guide. 
‘*Mist, unfortunately—impenetrable volumes of mist—came floating over (as 
so often they do) from the gloomy fells that compose a common centre for 
Easedale, Langdale, Eskdale, Borrowdale, Wastdale, Gatesgarthdale (pro- 
nounced Keskadale), and Ennerdale. Ten or fifteen minutes afford ample 
time for their aerial navigation ; within that short interval, sunlight, moonlight, 
starlight, alike disappear ; all paths are lost ; vast precipices are concealed, or 
filled up by treacherous draperies of vapour; the points of the compass are 
irrecoverably confounded ; and one vast cloud, too ,often the cloud of death 
even to the experienced shepherd, sits like a vast pavilion upon the summit and 
gloomy coves of Helvellyn, Mr. Gough ought to have allowed for this not 
unfrequent accident, and for its bewildering effects, under which all local know- 
ledge (even that of shepherds) becomes in an instant unavailing. What was 
the course and succession of his dismal adventures, after he became hidden from 
the world by the vapoury screen, could not be fully deciphered even by the most 
sagacious of mountaineers, although, in most cases they manifest an Indian 
truth of eye, together with an Indian felicity of weaving all the signs that the 
eye can gather into a significant tale, by connecting links of judgment and 
natural inference, especially where the whole case ranges within certain known 
limits of time and of space. But in this case two accidents forbade the appli- 
cation of their customary skill to the circumstances. One was, the want of 
snow at the time, to receive the impression of his feet ; the other, the unusual 
length of time through which his remains lay undiscovered. He had made the 
ascent at the latter end of October, a season when the final garment of snow, 
which clothes Helvellyn from the setting in of winter to the sunny days of June, 
has frequently not made its appearance. He was not discovered until the 
following spring, when a shepherd, traversing the coves of Helvellyn or of 
Fairfield in quest of a stray sheep, was struck by the unusual sound (and its 
echo from the neighbouring rocks) of a short quick bark, or cry of distress, as 
