the leader to a greater risk of slipping at a failing hold, and would demand more ingenious tactics. Our cave was large and airy; the water passed into it at the back, so that we could easily stay at the entrance and avoid the fall. High up above our heads were a couple of apertures in the roof, probably wide enough for our passage, but difficult to reach. The right wall of the gully was well broken up, and without ado we set ourselves at it and worked round the edge of the nearer overhanging block as a step to the other. Some thirty feet of my rope ran out before the second man advanced from the bed of the cave: not that the climbing refused to admit an earlier start, but that he was busy wringing out his clothes. I awaited his advance impatiently, for a bend in the gully prevented my seeing the next pitch above us--the last in the climb. But when he was firmly braced against the top boulder, hauling in the rope of the last man, I advanced to the end of my tether to steal an early glance at the pitch that report had spoken of so respectfully. Robinson’s account in the Wastdale book was succinct enough: ‘A return on to the floor of the ghyll was made near the top of the third pitch, when a little scrambling led to a very fine waterfall more than 100 feet high. Here climb in the water as little as you can; then diverge slightly on to the right hand of the ghyll just where the water spouts over a small recess; next traverse across a rather difficult slab into the cave under the final boulder, which is climbed on the left hand and is the last difficulty.’ The only part of his prescription that I had carried in my mind was the ‘climb in the water as little as you can,’ and we had been applying it all day with varying success. The trouble always is to make any headway at all against a descending mass of cold water, and we had come to regard the advice as indicative solely of the fact that an available route was only to be found in dry weather. To climb in the water as little as possible meant to choose a dry season and to mount by the usual line of flow. Another account that may prove interesting was given me by Messrs. G. and A. Abraham: ‘Some enjoyable scrambling in the bed of the ghyll brought us quickly to the last obstacle and certainly the finest part of the whole climb. The climber is immediately reminded here of the great amphitheatre in the Screes Gully, for, although on a much smaller scale, we have the same gigantic buttresses and receding slabs, with three suggested exits. The most obvious way out here is up the waterfall as usual. This we attempted until the amount of water on the steep, slippery rocks forced us out on to the difficult right-hand wall, about seventy feet above the beginning of the pitch. Here we climbed straight upwards, and, traversing round a very awkward corner, landed right on the top of the pitch, the leader requiring considerable help for the last twenty feet.’ Our own experiences were a little different, a