The Cumberland group of mountains, with its varied scenery and lakes, is surrounded with the carboniferous rocks—as bright and lovely a picture, set in a framework of jet or ebony, as the mind can contemplate. The great _scar_, or mountain limestone, constitutes the base of the coal series, resting on the old red conglomerate. This calcareous deposit is of vast thickness, range, and extent—a concrete mass of animal remains of five or six hundred feet. It presents the outline of a great coral reef which anciently fringed the center cluster of the lake mountains: and is still, with a few breaks, traceable along their wide and irregular circumference. The sublime gorge of Gordale, the fine gray precipices at the foot of Ingleborough, the caverns of Chapel-le-Dale and Clapham, the rocks of Kirby Londsdale Bridge, and the great white terrace of Whitbarrow, all derive their peculiar features from the effects of erosive action on this formation. Diverging from the great terminal group of the Cumbrians, the same deposit rises along the center of the district into an independent ridge, taking up the most commanding positions—the towering summit of Cross Fell on the one hand, and the celebrated High Peak of Derby on the other, with all its wondrous caves and sparkling fluor-crystals. The intermediate range of the Penine Alps, so denominated by the Romans, is chiefly composed of the formation. The caves of Kirkdale, the haunt of the British hyena and other extinct carnivora, are situated in the same limestone, which is also the repository of numerous lead mines, distinguished for their splendid metallic concretions and fluor-spars. And here, too, are rivers which are lost in its dark caverns; and that wonder of wonders, an astronomical paradox, where, from the peculiar conformation of the hills and ravines, the sun does not rise upon the inhabitants of Narrowdale, until he has passed his meridian, and, as if to repair the loss, twice sets upon their horizon in the course of every evening.