Now from Helvellyn you can see the Pennines, and across the Pennines lies Northumberland. We have nothing to do here with the Northumbrian, but as an immediate neighbour of these others it is interesting to note that he has less Norse blood in him, and together with his Lothian and Berwickshire neighbours is accounted the purest Saxon of any Englishman. His place-names have the Saxon flavour. Here in Lakeland we have _fells_ and _becks_ and _garths_ and _ghylls_; beyond the Pennines and the Cheviots they are all _burns_ and _laws_ and _tons_. The Lakelanders proper were not Border fighters as the word applies to their low country neighbours and the Northumbrians. They were liable to service, and frequently took a hand against the Scots, but their savage country was not tempting to the Scottish freebooter nor worth the risk. Nor when the tide set the other way were they accounted as actually of the following of the great Border houses. When James I. ascended the throne of a United Kingdom, and fondly fancied Border troubles were at an end, that canny monarch thought to make some money by commuting the feudal service nature of the Lakeland statesmen's holding to a money rent. These military tenants of the Crown met to the number of two thousand between Windermere and Kendal and swore that they would yield up their lives rather than their title-deeds, which settled the matter. It remained for the growth of national wealth, luxury, and what we call the march of civilization to destroy by individual land purchase, assisted by local conditions too complex to mention, the greater number of the Lakeland freeholders or "statesmen". There are still some few left in possession, but otherwise the man himself, though now a tenant, has by no means parted with his qualities because his father or his grandfather parted with his freehold. KIRKSTONE AND ULLSWATER