Gill. The village of Buttermere stands on declining ground near the foot of the lake fourteen miles from Keswick. It consists of a few scattered farm-houses, with a good inn, forming, by reason of the surrounding hills, the very picture of seclusion. "The margin of the lake, which is overhung by some of the loftiest and steepest of the Cumbrian mountains, exhibits on either side few traces of human neighbourhood; the level area, where the hills recede enough to allow of any, is of a wild pastoral character or almost savage. The waters of the lake are deep and sullen, and the barrier mountains, by excluding the sun for much of his daily course, strengthen the gloomy impressions. At the foot of this lake lie a few unornamented fields, through which rolls a little brook connecting it with the larger lake of Crummock, and at the edge of this miniature domain, upon the road side, stands a cluster of cottages, so small and few that in the richer tracts of the island they would scarcely be complimented with the name of hamlet."* A good road of nine miles, after climbing a Haws 800 feet high, conducts the visitor through the vale of Newlands to Keswick. A small chapel has been erected at the expense of the Rev. Vaughan Thomas, by the road side, upon the site of a still smaller one. The old chapel has been thus described : "It is not only the very smallest chapel, by many degrees, in all England, but is so mere a toy in outward appearance, that were it not for its antiquity, its wild mountain exposure, and its consecrated connexion with the final hopes and fears of the adjacent pastoral hamlet, but for these considerations the first movement of a stranger's feelings would be towards loud laughter; for the chapel looks not so much a miniature chapel in a drop scene from the Opera House, as a miniature copy from such a scene, and evidently could not receive within its walls more than half a dozen households."+

A footpath leading through the fields, and across the little stream connecting the two lakes, conducts to SCALE FORCE, one of the loftiest waterfalls in the vicinity of the lakes. The road, in damp weather especially, is none of the cleanest, and therefore a boat is frequently taken, which lands the visitor about half a-mile from the fall. A mountain path, leaving Scale Force on the left and climbing the fells above it, leads into Ennerdale. Floutern Tarn, which is passed on the way, serves as a land-mark.

Extending the excursion to SCALE HILL, four miles from Buttermere, the road traverses the eastern shore of Crummock Water, passing under the hills Whiteless, Grasmoor, and Whiteside. Melbreak is a fine object on the other shore. From the foot of this mountain a narrow promontory juts into the lake, the extremity of which, when the waters are swollen, becomes insulated. A short distance before Scale Hill is reached, there is a fine view into the sylvan valley of Lorton. At Scale Hill there is a comfortable inn, which for a few days might be made advantageously the tourist's residence. Boats may be had upon Crummock Lake, from which the inn is about a mile distant. Scale Force might be + Ibid.

* De Quincey.