106 



DEflWENT WATEE. 



WALKS ABOUT KESWICK. 



DKEWENTWATEB. 



At Keswick^ as elsewhere in the Lake District, 

 the visitor can scarcely go wrong in taking every 

 path he discerns, for there is beauty on every hand : 

 but it may be serviceable to indicate a few points 

 of view and pleasant strolls. 



I. The first object of attention will be the lake 

 itself; and it will probably be viewed by boat. The 

 Ratcliffes possessed Lord's Island, the 

 largest on the lake. E-amps Holme, 

 another of the islands, was their's also; and the 

 hermit, the dear friend of St. Cuthbert, who lived 

 on St. Herbert's Isle in the seventh century, is 

 somehow mixed up in legends, in local imagina- 

 tions which are careless of dates, with the same 

 family. All that is known of St. Herbert is, that 

 he really had a hermitage in that island,"^ and that 

 St. Cuthbert and he used to meet, either at Lindis- 

 farn or Derwent Water, once a year. The legend 

 of their deaths is well known; that, according to 

 their prayer, they died on the same day. There is 

 beauty in the tradition that the man of action and 

 the man of meditation, the propagandist and the 

 recluse, were so dear to each other, and so con- 

 genial. Vicar's, or Derwent Isle, is the other of 

 the four large islands. Lord's Isle was once a part 

 of the mainland. The Ratcliffes cut a fosse, in the 

 feudal times, and set up a drawbridge. When the 

 young Lord Derwentwater was captured for being 

 "^out" in 1715, his lady escaped, and saved her 

 liberty and the family jewels (to use them on be- 

 half of her husband) by clambering up one of the 



* There are some remains of walls on the island, which are be- 

 lieved to have been the walls of his cell. 



