the path to the left, passing Pennyrigg Quarries, and then keep the path down into the Gill. The bridges, put up by Mr. Marshall, and kept in repair by the Lake District Association, lead through the ravine to the force at its head. Thence Weatherlam can be ascended either by Steel Edge, the ridge to the left, or breasting the steep slope from the hollow of the cove.

From the top of the Old Man we have choice of many descents. By Levers Hause we can scramble down—it looks perilous but is easy to a wary walker,—to Leverswater; and thence by a stony road to the copper mines and civilization.

By Gaits Hause, a little to the west of the Old Man, we can reach Gaits Water, and so across Banniside Moor to the village: or we can take the grassy ridge and conquer Dow Crags with a cheap victory, which the ardent climber will scorn. He will attack the crags from below, finding his own way up the great screes that border the tarn, and attack the couloirs,—those great chasms that furrow the precipice. Only, he should not go alone. Here and there the chimney is barred by boulders wedged into its narrow gorge: which to surmount needs either a "leg up," or risky scrambling and some nasty jumps to evade them. These chimneys are described with due detail in the books on rock-climbing, but should not be rashly attempted by inexperienced tourists.

The simplest way down is along Little Arrow Edge. The route can be found, even if clouds blot out bearings and landmarks, thus. In the cairn on the top of the Old Man there is a kind of doorway. You leave that doorway square behind you, and walk as straight as you can forward into the fog—not rapidly enough to go over the edge by mistake, but confidently. Your natural instincts will make you trend a trifle to the left, which is right and proper. It you have a compass, steer south south-east. In five minutes by the watch you will be well on the grass-grown arête, thinly set with slate-slabs, but affording easy walking. Keep the grass on a slightly increasing downward slope; do not go down steep places either to right or to left, and in ten minutes more you will strike a ledge or shelf which runs all across the breast of the Old Man mountain, with a boggy stream running through it—not straight down the mountain, but across it. If you strike this shelf at its highest point, where there is no definite stream but only a narrow bit of bog from which the stream flows, you are right. If you find the stream flowing to your right hand, bear more to the left after crossing it. Five minutes more of jolting down over grass, among rough rocks which can easily be avoided, and you see Bursting Stone Quarry—into which there is no fear of falling if you keep your eyes open and note the time. By the watch you should be twenty minutes—a little more if you have hesitated or rested—from the top. Long before this the ordinary cloud-cap has been left aloft, and you see your way, even by moonlight, without the least difficulty towards the village; but though mist may settle down, from this quarry a distinct though disused road leads you safe home.

In ten minutes from the quarry the road brings you to Booth Tarn, through some extremely picturesque broken ground, from which under an ordinary sunset the views of the nearer hills are fine, with grand foreground. Booth Crag itself stands over the tarn, probably named from a little bield or shelter in ruins in a nook beneath it; and where the quarry road comes out upon Banniside Moss, the Coniston limestone appears, easily recognisable with its pitted and curved bands, contrasting with the bulkier volcanic breccia just above.

Beyond the tarn to the right are the volunteers' rifle-butts with their flagstaff. Take the path to the left, and in five minutes reach the gate of the intake, with lovely sunset and moonlight views of the Bell and the Scrow to the left, and Yewdale beyond; Red Screes and Ill Bell in the distance. Hence the road is plain, and twenty minutes more bring you past the Railway Station to Coniston village.

To give a good idea of the lie of the land there is nothing like a raised map. A careful and detailed coloured model of the neighbourhood (six inches to the mile, with the same vertical scale, so that the slopes and heights are not exaggerated, but true to nature) was made in 1882 under the direction of Professor Ruskin, who presented it to the Coniston Institute, where it has been placed in the Museum.

II.—THE LAKE.

Coniston Water it is called by the public now-a-days, but its proper name is Thurston Water. So it is written in all old documents, maps, and books up to the modern tourist period. In the deed of 1196 setting forth the boundaries of Furness Fells it is called Thorstanes Watter, and in lawyer's Latin Turstini Watra, which proves that the lake got its title from some early owner whose Norse name was Thorstein; in Latin, Turstinus; in English, Thurston. In the same way Ullswater was Ulf's water, and Thirlmere was Thorolf's mere, renamed in later times from a new owner Leathes water—though in the end the older title finally prevailed.

As a first rough survey it will be convenient to take the steam gondola, and check off the landmarks seen on her trip, an all too short half-hour, down to the waterfoot.

The start is from the pier near the head of the lake, at the quaint boathouse built seventy years ago, in what was then called the Gothic style, for the late Mr. John Beever of the Thwaite—the house on the slope of the Guards Wood above the Waterhead Hotel. The boathouse stands on a promontory made by Yewdale Beck, which falls into the lake close at hand, and brings down with every flood fresh material to build its embankment farther and farther into the lake. So rapidly is its work done that a boulder is pointed out, twenty yards inland, which was always surrounded by water twenty or thirty years ago.

Another cause helps to hasten their work, for it is in this part that the waves under the prevailing south-west winds attain their greatest size and strength. The steamer captain who lives here says that he has measured waves 65 feet long from crest to crest, five feet high from trough to crest. These great waves dash back the stones and gravel brought down by the becks and spread it northwards, embanking it in a ridge under the water from this point to Fir Point opposite. Dr. H. R. Mill, by his soundings in 1893, found the deepest part of the little northern reach to be hardly more than 25 feet; this was close to the actual head of the water, showing that it is the débris brought down by the Yewdale and Church Becks which is silting up the bed.

Looking round this northern reach, which the gondola does not traverse in her voyage, opposite is Fir Point, with the boathouse of Low Bank; a little higher up in a bay, the twin boathouses of Lanehead and Bank Ground; then the landings for Tent Lodge and Tent Cottage, and the bathing house and boathouse belonging to Victor Marshall, Esq., of Monk Coniston Hall, in the woods at the head of the lake. At the true waterhead, where the road from Hawkshead joins the road round the lake, used to stand the Old Waterhead Inn. Nearer us are the boathouses at Kirkby Quay, and the pier of the (new) Waterhead Hotel.

Leaving the steamer pier we are at once in deep water. The soundings increase rapidly off the mouth of Church Beck, just below Mason and Thwaites' boathouse; the bottom, gently shelving for a few yards out, suddenly goes over a bank, and down at a steep angle to a depth of 125 feet. On the evening of August 5th, 1896, a boy named George Gill sank there out of reach of his companion, and was drowned before help could be got. At the very moment the Parish Council in the village was discussing regulations for boating and