200 Mr. W. Brockbank on 



Stake Pass, form the head of Borrowdale. There are 

 similar moraines, I am informed, on the Borrowdale side of 

 the Stake Pass also, and evidences of glacial action are 

 abundant as you proceed down this remarkable valley. 



My friend Mr. Wm. Hull also informs me that the 

 Little Langdale valley, centreing in Bowfell, contains similar 

 moraines,and he has kindly sent me a sketch of an interesting 

 example just below the road over Wrynose Gap. Doubtless 

 they will be found to occur in all the valleys which radiate 

 from this Scawfell and Bowfell group, to the eastwards. 

 Westwards from Bowfell are the vales of the Esk and the 

 Duddon. Eskdale proceeds directly from Bowfell to the 

 sea at Ravenglass, having in its short course of only 12 

 miles a fall of nearly 3,000 feet, and this chiefly in the first 

 six miles of the valley. 



The estuary at Ravenglass has a very remarkable ap- 

 pearance from the numbers of large boulders of granite, 

 greenstone, slate, and porphyry, which lie scattered along 

 the shore and harbour, resembling on a small scale the 

 shores now frequented by drift-ice in the harbours of New- 

 foundland. A nearer examination at once introduces a 

 Lancashire geologist to the family of boulders found in 

 our Lancashire clays of the Boulder Drift, and the analogy 

 is so striking as at once to indicate their origin. 



Proceeding thence up Eskdale, we enter the granite 

 district, within the second mile; the sharply serrated moun- 

 tain range in the foreground of the landscape, of Muncaster 

 Fells, Harter Fells, and Birker Moor Fells, at once revealing 

 their granitic character. In its lower reach, above Mun- 

 caster Castle, and thence for four or five miles, the valley 

 is wide and filled up with diluvium, forming an almost level 

 "strath" through which the Esk winds its course. Standing 

 on the bridge, a mile above Muncaster Castle, the landscape 

 is completely closed in by an amphitheatre of granite hills, 

 and the idea is at once suggested that in former times this 



