anb 5I?ift^tt]^^aite, 91 



of barley. The second syllable, lengthened out, being an 

 obsolete name for that grain, still occasionally used in Scot- 

 land. The road soon leads you into the farm-yard of High 

 Tilberthwaite, where you have a choice of two roads for 

 continuing your journey ; and, though that to the left, leading 

 over the heights, may be the shorter, the other is recom- 

 mended as being the pleasanter. It meanders cheerfully 

 through an irregularly wooded vale nearly a mile in length, 

 connecting Tilberthwaite with Little Langdale. The enor- 

 mous heaps of blue stone, and the deep excavations on 

 every side of you, indicate the position of slate quattkg* 

 The stream which you soon approach is a branch of the 

 Brathay, which, rising on Wrynose, and the other hills round 

 the head of Little Langdale, flows down that valley, forming 

 one of the finest * forces ' in the country at Colwith, and, 

 after joining the Great Langdale stream in Elterwater, 

 another of less height though of greater bulk at Skelwith, 

 and ultimately becomes a principal feeder of Windermere. 

 You now stand upon the verge of Lancashire, for this brook 

 forms here the boundary between that county and West- 

 morland. Before crossing the beck you may be tempted to 

 follow its course upwards on the Lancashire side, and soon 

 fall in with a primitive stone bridge, of one bold graceful 

 arch, spanning the beck with as much elegance as though it 

 were a segment of the rainbow instead of a mere row of 

 slate flags jammed together perpendicularly in a rude but 

 efiicient fashion. This bridge is one of the very few re- 

 maining of the class whose rapid disappearance if so feel- 

 ingly deplored in one of Wordsworth's essays on lake scenery ; 

 wherein also are eulogized * the daring and graceful contempt 

 of danger and accommodation with which so many of them 

 are constructed, the rudeness of form of some, and their 

 endless variety/ The Dalesmen, it may be observed, have 



