Full sight of Lodore had now been gained, but not before two other cataracts flashing to one channel from Gowder Crag had claimed {183} our wonder, while we watched the water fall, as it seemed, out of heaven, down by the silver birches, down by the silver shale, and turn both to darkness by its white contrast. But what a magnificent rose-red glow those birch trees showed, and how with auburn glory the larches gleamed! how too in silken grey and delicate yellow the ash trees climbed the crags! We went forward, but not till we had noted that, while all the world towards Grange seemed one great grey water-flood, here right in front of the purple-brown cliff in whose cleft lay the white Lodore, stood up a little meadowy hill of verdure green as May--the first home-field of the wandering Viking who pushed his long ship ashore at Ravenglass and made his way over the Styhead Pass to ancient Borrodale. For in this green field still flows the spring where Ketel the Viking, who afterwards gave his name to the Wyke which we call Keswick to-day, drank in the olden time. Ketel's Well, as we gaze upon that emerald mound, takes us back to the ninth century and the first coming of the Norsemen to our dales; and what was it that bade the hardy Norse rover choose to pitch his camp by the spring on yonder hill but that same glorious cataract of Lodore, whose {184} gleaming waters and whose voice of thunder speaks to our heart as it one time spoke to his. Nay, for that weary wanderer over sea, Lodore spoke sweeter things. As he listened to the torrent's voice, there came back memories of his own home-land and all the sound and sight of those fair 'fosses' and those shining 'ghylls' from which he was an outlawed exile. [Illustration: LODORE AFTER A STORM.] We pass on beyond the hollies, beyond the amber reed-bed, beyond the grey copse, and gain the gate to the Fall. We cross the meadow and enter the wood and stand upon the little platform whence the Fall in its fulness may be seen. What strikes one at once is the majesty of the high-towering crag of Gowder to the left of Lodore. What strikes one next, is the feeling of a certain lack of height in the fall. It does not come rushing over a sheer precipice; it is not cloud-born; one seems to know that somewhere not far off a valley stream is passing along through quiet meadows and woodland, and something of the fierce wildness of its fall is curbed and tamed by the thought. Yet as we gaze to-day so white is the heaven in the rift between the cliffs whence it surges into sight, that a very little imagination enables us to feel as if the whole of that white interspace were foam, and {185} one's heart is stirred. Not in a rift, but from the topmost height we think we see and hear a visionary cataract fall and fall.