There are various opinions on the momentous question of what is the best weather for visiting falls such as this of Dungeon Ghyll. One eminent lover and describer of mountain scenery, says:—“To our liking, a waterfall is best in a rainless summer. After a flood, the noise is beyond all endurance. You get stunned and stupified, till your head splits. Then you may open your mouth like a barn door, and roar into a friend’s ear all in vain a remark on the cataract. To him you are a dumb man. In two minutes you are as completely drenched in spray, as if you had fallen out of a boat—and descend to dinner with a tooth-ache that keeps you in starvation in the presence of provender sufficient for a whole bench of bishops. In dry weather, on the contrary, the waterfall is in moderation; and instead of tumbling over the cliff in a perpetual peal of thunder, why it slides and slidders merrily and musically away down the green shelving rocks, and sinks into repose in many a dim or lucid pool, amidst whose foam-bells is playing or asleep the fearless Naiad. Deuce a headache have you—speak in a whisper, and not a syllable of your excellent observation is lost; your coat is dry, except that a few dew-drops have been shook over you from the branches stirred by the sudden wing-clap of the cushat—and as for tooth-ache interfering with dinner, you eat as if your tusks had been just sharpened, and would not scruple to discuss nuts, upper- and lower-jaw-work fashion, against the best crackers in the country.” I have the temerity to hold the opposite opinion on this “momentous question.” Some idea of the grounds on which I found that opinion, may be gathered from the following rhyming epistle, in which, “long, long ago,” I essayed to give a distant friend an account of a _winter_ excursion to Dungeon Ghyll:— [Sidenote: WATERPROOF ZEAL.]