39 
3. The climate ameliorating, the ice-sheet diminished, shrank into 
separate glaciers once more, and each glacier as it became smaller left 
moraine after moraine behind it, until when the ice had all disap- 
peared, the country was covered with mounds of moraine material 
much broken into and re-sorted by the swollen streams and rivers 
flowing from the ends of the fast-melting glaciers. 
4. Then a subsidence of the land ensued beneath the sea; the 
moraine matter was remodelled and partly rounded beneath the waves 
and currents ; and banks of sand and gravel were formed at certain 
points, where currents met. 
5. When the land had sunk some 800 and 1,000 feet beneath its 
present level, the cold conditions began to return, and floating ice 
swept through the various straits, which now are valleys parting one 
mountain range from another. 
6. The subsidence continued, until probably merely the mountain 
tops were above water, and then as slowly was the land once more up- 
heaved, and small glaciers occupied the mountain hollows. 
7. Finally, the relative level of sea and land became pretty much 
what it is now, and the second set of glaciers, which, although large, had 
never attained to the size of the first, dwindled away, and left the very 
‘perfect moraines now to be found at the head of many of the upland 
valleys. 
8. An early race of men, making Zolished stone-implements from 
the rocks of Scawfell, then inhabited the district, and saw perhaps 
the last of the Cumberland glaciers. This early race, by no means 
the earliest which England had seen, was succeeded by others to 
whom the use of metals was known, and the conquering Roman 
_ legions also left their mark on mountain top and valley bottom, which 
a short age before was covered with snow and ice. 
’ The lakes of the district lay in rock basins, or hollows scooped out of 
the solid rock. The rocky sides of these basins were often smoothed 
and scratched, and it was certain that the hollows had been filled with 
glacier ice, 
