PiNON WELL TO MECCA 157 



a score or so of temporary looking houses and cab- 

 ins, spotted about without any pretence of order. 

 A store, with kitchen and dining-room attached, and 

 a cashier's office of stone are all the buildings of any 

 size. The post-office shares quarters with a Club- 

 room containing an antique pool-table, the felt worn 

 to a curiosity and the pockets as hopeless as a 

 bachelor's. Relics of the Fourth remained in the 

 shape of a wire cable stretched across the street with 

 fag-ends of rockets and Roman candles still attached. 



I do not know how the place got its name, whether 

 through some Virginian who thus showed his loyalty 

 to the Old Dominion, or perhaps by way of compli- 

 ment to some charmer of a sentimental Argonaut. 

 However that may be, the present site, encircled by 

 steep, rough mountains, is really a kind of dale; 

 though it brought a pang to think of Martindale, 

 Grisedale, Ravenstonedale, and other old Lakeland 

 nooks, flowery and green where this was harshly 

 red and gray. Yet when I climbed above the village 

 at sunset, and the light came warmer on crag and 

 gully, the shadows more tender in the hollow of the 

 pass — yes, that might be Glaramara, and that Con- 

 iston Old Man; in that winding gorge Ullswater 

 might lie, or, scarcely less solitary than this, lonely, 

 lovely Wastwater. 



The view to the north was memorable as an ex- 

 ample of the ultra-desolate. Beyond the ragged 

 brown foreground lay the pale gray expanse of a 

 dry lake, whitened near its centre by the alkaline 

 deposit from its vanished waters. Beyond that rose 

 the ashy wall of the Sheephole Mountains, quite 



