Whilst by no means ugly in itself, Keswick is not remarkable for beauty. What it lacks in this way, however, is more than atoned for by its surroundings. A mile to the north of it is the impressive Skiddaw and Blencathra group, a perfect blaze of colour when the heather blooms or when the dying bracken catches the sunlight and splashes their breasts with molten gold. “A great camp of single mountains, each in shape resembling a giant’s tent” bounds it on the west and south, with Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite nestling snugly at their base. Out to the eastward is the fertile valley of the Greta with the spur of Helvellyn overlooking it--truly a galaxy of interest and beauty of which Keswickians may be passing proud. But Derwentwater itself, and its wonderful setting, will rightly claim our first attention. An imposing sheet of water roughly oval in shape and about three miles long by a mile across, with shores indented and cut up into dozens of secluded creeks; a surface dotted with richly wooded islands, possessing the charm of personal and historic associations; the whole surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains “rocky but not vast, broken into many fantastic shapes, peaked and splintered” and with narrow valleys opening up between them; reflecting faithfully stern precipice, velvet-like meadow, foliage-draped hillside, with here and there a white farmstead showing through, and mountain ghylls that “pour forth streams more sweet than Castaly”--such is Derwentwater. Ruskin, in his “Modern Painters,” has said in effect that this lake as seen from Friar’s Crag affords one of the three finest prospects in the whole world. And as we stand on the fir-grown rocky promontory, but five minutes’ walk from Keswick, on a still summer morning and gaze up between the islands to the “Jaws of Borrowdale” and the Scawfell mountains shimmering in the blue haze; or upon a sullen day in March when the fell-tops are obscured by clouds and the sun sends long streamers of light through the rifts to the disturbed surface of the water; or when a southerly gale sweeps down from Lodore, staggering the Scotch firs, dashing the breakers against the crag and recoiling in spindrift and foam--under whatever conditions this view is regarded it will be generally conceded that Ruskin was justified in his opinion. The island quite close at hand on the left is Lord’s Island, once the home of the Earls of Derwentwater. The precipice above it is Walla Crag and it was up a steep rift in its face--the one marked by the white stone near its top--that Lady Derwentwater fled with the family jewels. Her lord was lying under sentence of death in London for espousing the cause of the Pretender, and this desperate, but, alas, unavailing climb was undertaken with the object of journeying to ransom his life. [Illustration: Friar’s Crag, Derwentwater With Walla Crag and Lord’s Island.] [Illustration: The Head of Derwentwater