SCAWFELL PIKE. 209 



sea were touched with the clear light of the sun. 

 ' It is there ! ' said he, pointing to the sea beyond 

 Whitehaven, and there we perceived a light vapour, 

 unnoticeable but by a shepherd accustomed to 

 watch all mountain-bodings. We gazed around 

 again, and yet again, unwilling to lose the remem- 

 brance of what lay before us in that mountain- 

 solitude ; and then prepared to depart. Meanwhile 

 the air changed to cold, and we saw that tiny 

 vapour swelled into mighty masses of cloud, which 

 came boiling over the mountains. Great Gable, 

 Helvellyn, and Skiddaw were wrapped in storm; 

 yet Langdale and the mountains in that quarter 

 remained all bright in sunshine. Soon the storm 

 reached us ; we sheltered under a crag ; and almost 

 as rapidly as it had come, it passed away, and left 

 us free to observe the struggles of gloom and sun- 

 shine in other quarters. Langdale had now its share; 

 and the Pikes of Langdale 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 at these auspi- 

 cious words. May the tourist who reads this on the 

 Pike see every cloud vanish from every summit ! * 



* A gentleman who ascended Scawfell Pike on the 9th of July, 

 1857, informs us that, setting out from John Gillbanks' homestead, 

 at the foot of the Langdale Pikes, and something short of a mile 

 of the head of that magnificent mountain-valley, he accomplished 

 the ascent with no great expenditure of muscular effort, within 

 three hours and a half, by a line of route leading up Rosset Ghyll, 

 at the head of Langdale, and thence past Angle Tarn to Esk 

 Hause. The adventure he says presented no special difficulty, 

 " though," he adds, " it proved a lost one as regarded 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 



O 



