To the mountaineer who makes his way from Seascale or from Drigg to Wastdale Head, the Cumberland hills with their long, rolling outlines, their flanks concealed by superincumbent soil and vegetation, do not seem to promise well as far as rock climbing is concerned. Only here and there do the ridges break into rocky precipices; nowhere is seen the rugged grandeur of the Highlands of Scotland; such valleys as Glencoe with its rock-built walls, or the splintered summits of the Coolin, or of An Teallach, do not exist. Yet the rock-climber who stops at the inn at the head of Wastdale may spend weeks before he has exhausted the district. He will be lucky indeed, and a first-rate climber to boot, if he has done the best of the climbs without further aid than that afforded by what the mountaineer calls the 'moral' support of the rope. Once upon a time a celebrated climber of Alpine repute came to Wastdale for the first, alas! also for the last time. 'Climbing in the Caucasus,' Mummery said, 'was easy and safe; in the Alps too it was usually easy and safe, though sometimes difficult; but climbing as practised at Wastdale Head was both difficult and dangerous.' The great delight of the climber in the Cumberland hills is in gullies or 'ghylls,' and no wonder, for there are endless gullies both great and small, the climbs in which vary with the state of the weather, and may be easy or difficult, wet or dry, or dirty, according to circumstances. Then again, the climber must have a perfect contempt for streams, and especially waterfalls, for the ascent of a perpendicular 'pitch' through a delightfully cold and invigorating shower bath will be one of his earliest experiences. But there are plenty of other climbs besides those in ghylls. Hidden away in the recesses of the hills are sharp and jagged pinnacles of hard porphyritic rock, precipices smooth, flawless, and sometimes overhanging, whose firm grey bastions have withstood the storms of ages; whilst only at their feet, where lie the remnants which have yielded, flake by flake, from the massive buttresses above, does the ruin proclaim that the hand of time carves the rocks on the mountain-side as well as the valleys below. This was written several years ago, before all the rock problems, and also before all their variations, had been worked out. When first I visited Wastdale Head it was at Christmas time. I knew there was a pinnacle of rock on Great Gable, also that another rock climb could be obtained on the Pillar mountain--that was all. Mr. Jones had never visited Wastdale, and his work was unwritten. The entries in the climbers' book at the inn were only just begun. W. P. Haskett Smith, J. W. Robinson, C. Slingsby, and G. Hastings were the pioneers of those days; they first really drew the attention of mountaineers to the fact that rock climbing of every degree of difficulty could be indulged in amongst the hills that surrounded the head of Wastdale.