_Wednesday, November 7th._--On a damp and gloomy morning we set forward, William on foot, and I upon the pony, with William's greatcoat slung over the saddle crutch, and a wallet containing our bundle of "needments." As we went along the mist gathered upon the valleys, and it even rained all the way to the head of Patterdale; but there was never a drop upon my habit larger than the smallest pearls upon a lady's ring. The trees of the larger island upon Rydale Lake were of the most gorgeous colours; the whole island reflected in the water, as I remember once in particular to have seen it with dear Coleridge, when either he or William observed that the rocky shore, spotted and streaked with purplish brown heath, and its image in the water, together were like an immense caterpillar, such as, when we were children, we used to call _Woolly Boys_, from their hairy coats.... As the mist thickened, our enjoyments increased, and my hopes grew bolder; and when we were at the top of Kirkstone (though we could not see fifty yards before us) we were as happy travellers as ever paced side by side on a holiday ramble. At such a time and in such a place every scattered stone the size of one's head becomes a companion. There is a fragment of an old wall at the top of Kirkstone, which, magnified yet obscured as it was by the mist, was scarcely less interesting to us when we cast our eyes upon it, than the view of a noble monument of ancient grandeur has been--yet this same pile of stones we had never before observed. When we had descended considerably, the fields of Hartsop, below Brotherswater, were first seen like a lake, coloured by the reflection of yellow clouds. I mistook them for the water; but soon after we saw the lake itself gleaming faintly with a grey, steely brightness; then appeared the brown oaks, and the birches of splendid colour, and, when we came still nearer to the valley, the cottages under their tufts of trees and the old Hall of Hartsop with its long irregular front and elegant chimneys....