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if from a dog or young fox. Mr. Gough had not been missed ; for those who 
saw or knew of his ascent from the Wythburn side of the mountain, took it for 
granted that he had fulfilled his intention of descending in the opposite direction 
into the valley of Patterdale, or into the Duke of Norfolk’s deer-park on 
Ullswater, or possibly into Matterdale; and that he had finally quitted the 
country by way of Penrith. Having no reason, therefore, to expect a domestic 
animal in a region so far from human habitations, the shepherd was the more 
surprised at the sound, and its continued iteration. He followed its guiding, 
and came to a deep hollow, near the awful curtain of rock called Striding 
Edge. There, at the ‘foot of a tremendous precipice, lay the body of the 
unfortunate tourist; and, watching by his side, a meagre shadow, literally 
reduced to a skin and ‘to bones that could be counted (for it is a matter of 
absolute demonstration that he never could have obtained either food or shelter 
through his long winter’s imprisonment) sat this most faithful of servants— 
mounting guard upon his master’s honoured body, and protecting it (as he had 
done effectually) from all violation by the birds of prey which haunt the central 
solitudes of Helvellyn :— 
‘How nourished through that length of time, 
He knows, who gave that love sublime, 
And sense of loyal duty—great 
Beyond all human estimate.’ ” 
Edward Baines in his “Companion to the Lakes,” 1830, adds 
nothing to our knowledge. W. A. Chatto, under the xom de plume 
of “Stephen Oliver,” in 1834, in his “Recollections of Fly Fishing 
in Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland,” simply copies 
the account that Slee may have written to the Cumberland Pacquet in 
1805, but emphasises the fact of the presence of foxes and wild 
birds which haunt the fells and prey upon the carcases of the 
sheep and lambs which lie among the hills, as accounting for the 
destruction of the flesh from the body of the unfortunate traveller. 
During my search among records of Gough’s death a corre- 
spondent sent me an extract from the “Papers, Letters, and 
Journals,” by William Pearson, printed for private circulation in 
1863. William Pearson was born at Borderside in 1780, and he 
writes—“On the zoth of August, 1822, I set out and went from 
Crosthwaite (Westmorland) to Keswick that day . . . was 
told by the landlord at Wythburn, who knew Mr. ons who 
perished on Helvellyn, that his dog was a little brown cocker, but 
