At length satisfied of its reality, he went into the house and told his master he had something curious to show him. The master said he supposed Stricket wanted him to look at a bonfire (it being the custom for the shepherds on the eve of St. John to vie with each other for the largest bonfire); however, they went out together, and before Stricket spoke of or pointed to the phenomenon, Mr. Lancaster himself observed it, and when they found they both saw alike, they summoned the rest of the family, who all came, and all saw the visionary horsemen. There were many troops, and they seemed to come from the lower part of the fell, becoming first visible at a place called Knott; they then moved in regular order in a curvilinear path along the side of the fell, until they came opposite to Blakehills, when they went over the mountain and disappeared. The last, or last but one, in every troop, galloped to the front, and then took the swift walking pace of the rest. The spectators saw all alike these changes in relative position, and at the same time, as they found on questioning each other when any change took place. The phenomenon was also seen by every person at every cottage within a mile; and from the time that Stricket first observed it, the appearance lasted two hours and a half, viz. from half-past seven until night prevented any further view. Blakehills lay only half a mile from the place of this extraordinary appearance. Such are the circumstances as related in Clarke's _Survey of the Lakes_ (fol. 1789), and he professes to give this account in the words of Mr. Lancaster, by whom it was related to him, and on whose testimony he fully relied; and he subjoins a declaration of its truth signed by the eye-witnesses, William Lancaster and Daniel Stricket (who then lived under Skiddaw, and followed the business of an auctioneer), dated 21st July, 1785. Mr. Clarke remarks that the country abounds in fables of apparitions, but that they are never said to have been seen by more than one or two persons at a time, and then only for moment; and remembering that Speed mentions some similar appearance to have preceded a civil war, he hazards the supposition that the vision might prefigure the tumults of the rebellion of the following year. My Query is, Whether any subsequent appearance of the same kind is recorded to have been observed on this haunted mountain, and whether any attempt to account for it on principles of optical science, as applied to a supposed state of the atmosphere, has ever been published? One is reminded of the apparition said to have been witnessed above Vallambrosa early in the fourteenth century. Rogers, after mentioning in the canto on "Florence and Pisa," in his _Italy_, that Petrarch, when an infant of seven months old (A.D. 1305), narrowly escaped drowning in a flood of the Arno, on the way from Florence to Ancisa, whither his mother was retiring with him, says: