their sheep, prized it still more highly
as a remedy for colic and other human ills. There are several
pencil-mills in the village, which, in addition to other claims for
fame, is noted as one of the rainiest spots in England, the annual
rainfall at Seathwaite sometimes reaching one hundred and eighty-two
inches. The Derwent flows on through a gorge past the isolated pyramidal
rock known as Castle Crag, and the famous Bowder Stone, which has fallen
into the gorge from the crags above, to the hamlet of Grange, where a
picturesque bridge spans the little river. We are told that the
inhabitants once built a wall across the narrowest part of this valley:
having long noticed the coincident appearance of spring and the cuckoo,
they rashly concluded that the latter was the cause of the former, and
that if they could only retain the bird their pleasant valley would
enjoy perpetual spring; they built the wall as spring lengthened into
summer, and with the autumn came the crisis. The wall had risen to a
considerable height when the cuckoo with the approach of colder weather
was sounding its somewhat asthmatic notes as it moved from tree to tree
down the valley; it neared the wall, and as the population held their
breath it suddenly flew over, and carried the spring away with it down
the Derwent. Judge of the popular disgust when the sages of that region
complainingly remarked that, having crossed but a few inches above the
topmost stones of the wall, if the builders had only carried it a course
or two higher the cuckoo might have been kept at home, and their valley
thus have enjoyed a perennial spring.

The Derwent flows on along its gorge, which has been slowly ground out
by a glacier in past ages, and enters the lake through the marshy, flat,
reedy delta that rather detracts from the appearance of its upper end.
Not far away a small waterfall comes tumbling over the crags among the
foliage; this miniature Niagara has a fame almost as great as the mighty
cataract of the New World, for it is the "Fall of Lodore," about which,
in answer to his little boy's question, "How does the water come down at
Lodore?" Southey wrote his well-known poem that is such a triumph of
versification, and from which this is a quotation:

"Flying and flinging, writhing and wringing,
Eddying and whisking, spouting and frisking,
Turning and twisting
Around and around, with endless rebound,
Smiting and fighting, a sight to delight in,