Kirkstone Pass looms always large in one's Lakeland memories. For one thing, it is the ladder over which all traffic laboriously climbs from the comparatively populous shores of Windermere into the long sequestered trough of Ullswater, while for the walker it links the eastern block of mountains to the Helvellyn and central group. It is, I think, the highest road pass in England, touching the line of 1500 feet where a lonely inn claims, by a natural inference, the uncomfortable distinction of being the highest habitation in the kingdom. But whatever may be the measure of its winter solitude, the cheery turmoil of the shepherds' meeting in November, attended by some three hundred more or less interested persons, must put heart into its occupants for the ordeal. For on that great day, crowned by a gargantuan feast, the stray sheep that have wandered from their rightful ranges and mingled with a neighbouring flock are handed over, accompanied by ceremonies of immemorial use. Then, too, a hundred or so of collie dogs settle such disputes among themselves as may be of old standing, or more often perhaps excited thereto by such unparalleled opportunities. A hound trail usually completes the long day which begins betimes, for every man upon these mountains is an enthusiast on the chase in its literal sense, and knows as much of hounds and foxes as many an M.F.H. elsewhere. The steep descent into the narrow, verdant, stone-walled, thinly peopled floor of the head of Patterdale, with its sprinkling of little white-washed, scyamore-shaded homesteads, is not a theme for words but for the brush; above all for the eye itself. Caudale Moor and Hartshope Dodd loom largest above our right shoulder, shutting out the lofty solitudes behind, while on the left Redscrees, Raven Crag, and Harts Crag, and a fine confusion of rugged summits culminate in Helvellyn, which upon this eastern side shows its nobler and precipitous front. Brotherswater, though but a quarter of a mile in diameter, fills the vale, and like a jewel catches every humour of these ever-restless skies; gleaming betimes like molten gold, or on windless noons reflecting the greys and greens of the overhanging steeps so vividly on its glassy surface as almost to efface itself in its own shadows; at other times, torn by the tempests that pour down from Kirkstone, into a sheet of seething foam. For it is incredible to what a fury even a little lake like this can lash itself, when exposed to the concentrated volleys of two or three mountain glens.