Before entering into the history of the Pillar it is almost indispensable to give a short general description of its main features in order to assist the comprehension of the facts narrated. Difficult as it must always be to find an image which shall supply a stranger with any clear idea of a mass so irregular and unsymmetrical as this, yet its general appearance and the arrangement of its parts may be roughly apprehended in the following manner:--Imagine a large two-gabled church planted on the side of a steep hill. From the western and loftier gable let there rise, at the end nearest the mountain, a stunted tower. Finally let the building be shattered and all but overwhelmed under an avalanche of _débris_. What will be the effect? Naturally the stream of stones will be much deeper above than below, and, while nearly burying the tower and upper ends of the roof, will flow along between the two gables and run off, as rainwater would do, at the far end. Angular fragments, however, remain at rest unless the slope is very steep, and consequently a long talus will be formed sloping down to the brink of the sudden drop at an angle of something like 45 degrees. Here we have a fair representation of the Pillar mass: the tower will be the High Man, and the gable from which it rises the Low Man. It will be readily understood that the second gable may be a source of some confusion to those who are ignorant that there is more than one, and from some points may disguise or altogether conceal the tower. This is why it is called the _Sham Rock_; but it is only from below that it would be recognised as part of the Pillar mass, for from above it is wholly insignificant. When viewed from immediately below, the tower is concealed behind the gable from which it rises, and the whole mass of rock bears a rough resemblance to the letter =M=; but from above, the High Man, with which alone the climber from the east side has to reckon, is also the only part of the rock which he is likely to observe. The result is that, when the Low Man is mentioned to anyone who knows only the Easy Way, the reply is usually on the model of the poet Wordsworth's only joke: 'Why, my good man, till this moment I was not even aware that there _was_ a Low Man!' Yet the Low Man is by far the finer object of the two, and its cliffs are at least six times as high as those of what is called the High Man. The only side from which the latter shows a respectable elevation is the west, where the scree lies much lower, because it has a free escape, instead of being pent up between the two gables like the east scree.