Turner’s picture of the coach crossing the sands is dramatic, but nothing in the way of drama is enacted there now. It is a grey and sullen scene. On the skyline to the left is the tall ugly tower at Morecambe, and dimly on the right the mountains of Lakeland. The London and North-Western Railway runs along the shore, at its Hest Bank station cutting off proper access, and only by the rarest chance is the Over-Sands route now taken. XVII [Illustration: CARNFORTH.] [Sidenote: _THE BUCKSTONE_] The village of Bolton-le-Sands, standing on the Lancaster Canal, and near the shore, is a small place of many inns—the “Blue Anchor,” “Black Bull” and others—and an old church, surrounded and almost overhung by trees. Succeeding it is Carnforth, growing almost while you wait, in the new-found prosperity of its ironworks, where a goodly quantity of the hæmatite ore of the adjoining Furness district is smelted. Beyond it, in a choice of routes to Kendal, by Milnthorpe or by Burton-in-Kendal, we take the second, past the “Longlands” inn; where traces of an older road to Kendal are to be found. A mile onward, a considerable stretch of it, on the left hand of the present highway, exists as a deserted lane, very narrow here and there, and overgrown with grass. In general, however, farmers have gradually abolished it and added it to their pastures, and even this surviving stretch is in process of being similarly swallowed and digested. Portions of it are not without their romantic aspects: as where a huge granite crag, called from time immemorial “the Buckstone,” stands in the hedgerow and recalls the trials of travellers in a bygone age, when roads were little better than winding tracks and sign-posts did not exist. They went, those palpitating travellers, as directed, “past the Buckstone,” standing for centuries as sure a landmark as anything in this countryside. And now it is forgotten, except by the farming and field-folk and those whose business or pleasure is in the byways and the hedges. Many surrounding houses and natural objects are named after the wild deer that once roamed the district: among them Roanad Hill, and Hilderstone and Deerslack farms. From the Buckstone you see the rugged terraced hill of Farleton Knott, styled by the county historian “the Gibraltar of Westmoreland,” and, down beneath, the clustered houses of Burton-in-Kendal; but before you reach that decayed town the old road is cut off and a modern lane leads on the right into the highway, past Dalton Park, through whose grounds the old road ran its winding way. Still, a few yards within the Park wall, may be seen, amid the trees, a rude milestone bearing nothing by way of inscription save the figure “10.” This, if you please, was the curt way of informing travellers that they were ten miles from Lancaster. It is obvious that old-time wayfarers had to bring some native understanding with them.