This is, of course, the smooth side of Helvellyn, and you may ascend it from virtually any point. Roughly speaking, it represents a huge mound cloven half down the middle and the refuse carted away. After climbing the steep smooth slope from the Thirlmere side to the top, you find yourself suddenly standing on the edge of a precipice, almost of a crater, with the farther side of course wanting, and in its stead beautiful sweeps of glen and crag dipping gradually to the vale where the blue coils of Ullswater lie sleeping. Needless to add, this is but a fraction of the prospect from Helvellyn, and to relate what can be seen from it on a reasonably clear day would merely be to compile a chart of the entire mountain system of Lakeland, and for an exceptionally clear one it would be necessary to make many and remoter additions. To anyone in touch with these things, the summit of Helvellyn is an inspiring spot, commanding in a single glance the entire dominion of a race not merely homogeneous in breed, but till recently unique in situation. Here were a people, ranging as individuals from peasant to yeomen, to put it roughly; four hundred square miles, say, of freehold farmers, who had never known a landlord since the Crown in the sixteenth century held them as tenants on Border service; a complete democracy among themselves, into whose lives the influence of an aristocracy, as exerted everywhere else without exception in Great Britain, never entered. For there was no such thing within all these wide bounds. These primitive conditions passed away by degrees during the last century. But it was such that bred the Lakelander much as you see him now, though inevitably modified by the influx of large landlords who have bought him out, of villa residents and countless tourists. But here he is still, a type who till recently had virtually no experience of what social grades and distinctions meant in his own daily life, though he dispatched from his rugged stone homestead a steady stream of raw lads who rose to power, wealth, and influence in the world. The Lakelander, too, like his immediate neighbours, is of more definitely Scandinavian origin than any other community in England. His country bristles with Norse place-names; his genuine tongue is so full of it, that an expert in old Cumbrian, it is said, can almost read the Norse Bible. His traditions give him an easy and independent bearing. For two or three generations of more or less contact with the outer world and its complications can only modify, not efface, such things. He still remains a cheery, independent soul, but absolutely one of Nature's gentlemen. [Illustration: THIRLMERE AND HELVELLYN]