LODOEE CATARACT. 123 



those at Keswick, except for the convenience of head 

 quarters. To visit the fall, the way 

 is through the gay little garden, and 

 the orchard, (where the fish preserves are terrible 

 temptations to waste of time,) and over a foot- 

 bridge, and up into the wood, where the path leads 

 to a mighty chasm. It is the chasm, with its 

 mass of boulders and magnificent flanking towers 

 of rock, that makes the impressiveness of the Lo- 

 dore fall, more than the water. No supply short of 

 a full river or capacious lake could correct the 

 disproportion between the channel and the flood. 

 After the most copious rains, the spectacle is of a 

 multitude of little falls, and nowhere of a sheet 

 or bold shoot of water. The noise is prodigious, as 

 the readers of Southey's description are aware : and 

 the accessaries are magnificent. Gowder Crag* on 

 the left, and Shepherd's Crag on the right, shine 

 in the sun, or frown in gloom like no other rocks 

 about any of the falls of the district; and vegeta- 

 tion flourishes everywhere, from the pendulous 

 shrubs in the fissures, two hundred feet overhead, 

 to the wild flowers underfoot in the wood. On a 

 lustrous summer evening, when the lights are 

 radiant, and the shadows sharp and deep, the scene 

 is incomparable, whatever may be the state of the 

 water. When the stream is fullest, and the wind 

 is favourable, it is said the fall is heard the distance 

 of four miles. There is something else to be heard 

 here; and that is the Borrowdale echoes. A can- 

 non is planted in the meadow before the inn, which 

 awakens an uproar from the surrounding crags to 

 Glaramara. 

 The road from Lodore to Keswick, about three 



