THE RAKE’S PROGRESS.--This happy title dates from about 1881. The Progress is an easy ledge leading from the lower end of the Lord’s Rake to the point where the Mickledore ridge joins the main mass of Scawfell. It runs along the base of the vertical walls of this mountain, and though at a great elevation above the huge Mickledore hollow, is scarcely entitled to the thrilling adjective _vertigineuse_ of the French climbing vocabulary. Yet it is capable of carrying one into the finest situations; and even the hardened expert, with his steady head and well-trained muscles, realises while on it that danger is hovering about him at every step, though it does not touch him. Years ago I read, in Freshfield’s ‘Italian Alps,’ of the Pelmo traverse in the Ampezzo Dolomites, and memory seized on the Rake’s Progress as the nearest approach to it that mountain experience had then afforded. Let there be no rise on the Mickledore; make the Progress thrice as long, and a little more rakish; change the rock from porphyry to magnesian limestone; let the drop below the ledge be a few hundred feet instead of a few score; make it necessary to crawl on all fours in one or two corners, and the resemblance will be perfect! In a few yards after the preliminary scramble on to the ledge, the crags are broken on our right by the short chimney entrances to Steep Ghyll and Moss Ghyll. These cannot be mistaken, inasmuch as they mark the last possible points of attack on these cliffs for one-half of the traverse.