host, and got him fined twenty pounds; one
person even bewails the lack of beer in
immortal verse, or verses:

   "There was a farm house at Wastdale,
    Where the one tiling they wanted was ale;
       You could have milk and water,
       But not ale and porter,
   At that snug little house at Wastdale."

But there are weak brethren, too, upon the
other side of the question, who, in soberest
prose, " are glad to find a village without a
public-house in it, yet affording such good
entertainment for man and horse."

The best of all the remarks, perhaps, and
the most to the purpose is that of Joseph W.,
Liverpool, who informs us that " Parties at a
loss for a bell in the parlour, will find the
attendant tractable when whistled on!"
With which the Visitors' Book concludes.

Towards evening the whole population—
about thirty souls— repaired to a small
green field in the centre of the vast mountain
amphitheatre, to take part in, or be
spectators of the games. There was a great
deal of good practice wrestling, and we
ourselves were very good-naturedly initiated by
the Westdale youth in the seven scientific
ways of being thrown. Young John Ritson
took us all—one down another come on— and
felled us all very satisfactorily. He is a
rising athlete in those parts, and exhibited
to us several belts he had gained at
various neighbouring meetings, of which his
father seemed to be to the full as proud as
he. Jumping, too, we had, of a rare kind,
the performers starting with a couple of
huge stones, which they cast from them just
as they made their spring, in order to give
them an extra impetus; and we also had
jumping on all fours,—an importation into
Westdale of our own, and one which very
much delighted the aborigines.

Not till the giant shadows of the Western
Fells had started across the little field, and
presently filled all the vale with gloom, did
we leave that merry scene, which was
undisfigured by drunkenness or quarrel; then,
gladly vacating our stately parlour, we
joined the good folks in the kitchen for the
remainder of the evening, with their pipes
and— tea. Very pleasant hearing were the
tales William Ritson told us of beck and
fell, new and interesting of themselves, and
not the less attractive because now and then
we were obliged to ask the meaning of a
term or two— better Saxon than we
Southerners knew how to speak. He told us
many a story of old Scawfell Top yonder,
whereon the sappers built their nests at
survey time, which once were blown about
their ears at midnight, so suddenly that the
whole sixteen men came stumbling, how they
could, through storm and darkness, down to
Wastdale Head, transformed to Highlanders
—without their nether garments. After
this, they built their stations on the Pikes,
one upon each side, so that they might
change their quarters with the wind; but in
later times, the soldiers lived below, and
only climbed up to their eyrie in the
daytime; one of whom, by long custom, was
wont to ascend those three steep cragset
miles in sixty minutes, and to descend in
forty. Years ago, a sergeant, who had been
employed here upon survey, and had marked
how solitary a spot the hamlet was, deserting
from his regiment afterwards, came to
this lone valley with wife and child, and
dwelt there for a great space of time, after
which he leisurely crossed the seas.

Then we had descriptions—such as I have
sometime read in old books of pastimes— of
fox and hare-hunting among the fells, and in
particular of hunting the sweetmeart, which is
a sort of polecat without the unpleasant smell.
Best of all, perhaps, were the incidents of
mountain travel in the winter times. How
statesmen — that is, small farmers, such as
Ritson himself— and shepherds had alike to
explore the perilous icy fells for sheep,
cragfast or injured; and still more how, when one
of their small society was missing, or behind
his expected time, the whole dale would
sally out with lights, and searching for him
diligently over these inhospitable hills, nor
often fail to find him.

"Surely," said we, " if a man fell down
Pease Gill, or any such place, it would be
useless enough to go to look for him."

"Nay, but," said William, " one of our folk
did fall there, when I was a young chap, and
I helped to fetch him home."

The poor fellow had set off to look after
his sheep upon Scawfell, and did not return at
evening; therefore, four men, his neighbours in
the scriptural sense, turned out into the snow
and night with lanterns, and tracked his
footmarks up the very beckside we had gone
that morning, and along the shelving bank
bordering the chasm, at the brink of which
the footmarks ceased. Then they knew he
had fallen over, and must needs be a dead
man; but still, retracing their steps a little,
they struggled up the icy beck until they
found spots of blood upon it, and blood upon
the snow, and soon the man himself,
insensible, and with fractured skull, but not
without breath; his iron boot-heel had
caught in a cleft as he descended, and,
though torn right off from the sole, had
greatly broken his fall. The four men got a
ladder, carried him home, as if upon a bier,
and sent some sixteen miles or so for the
nearest doctor. The life of the man was
saved, so that he lived ten years afterwards,
although such had been the shock that he
was never rightly " hissell" any more.