I40 ^cafell 



dale were decorated by two splendid rainbows. Before we 

 again reached Esk Hause, every cloud had vanished from 

 every summit.' 



We cannot do better than stop with these auspicious words. 

 May the tourist who reads this on the Pike see every cloud 

 vanish from every summit 1 



A gentleman who ascended Scafell Pike on the 9th of 

 July, 1857, set out from John Gillbanks' homestead, (now 

 the New Hotel), at the foot of the I.angdale Pikes, and 

 something short of a mile off the head of that magnificent 

 mountain- valley. He accomplished the ascent, with no great 

 expenditure of muscular effort, in less than three hours and a 

 half, by a line of route leading up Rosset Gill, at the head 

 of Langdale, and thence past Angle Tarn to Esk Hause. 

 The adventure, he says, presented no special difiiculty, 

 * though,' he adds, * it proved a lost one as regards my main 

 object : for, on planting myself on the culminating point 

 which was to unfold to me such a vision of majesty and 

 beauty, I found myself standing on a speck of rock amid 

 an ocean of cloud and mist. There was nothing for the eye 

 to see, — nothing for the memory to retain, — nothing above, 

 around, beneath me (for aught my closed sealed up senses 

 revealed to me, or aught perhaps that the dulled drenched 

 fancy and feeling of the moment suggested) nothing but 

 mist, mist, illimitable mist, through which " even a hawk's 

 keen eye " might not pierce a score of yards. Our lo triumphe 

 was a poor affair indeed, and of briefest duration. But the 

 descent proved a more serious matter, and had more of the 

 excitement of incident about it ; for my guide — though he 

 had been thirty-four times on the summit of Scafell — got 

 puzzled and perturbed amid the surging vapours, and my 

 allowance of mind and muscle was approaching exhaustion 



