Some of the channels, it was said, were never two days together in the same place. The Keer mentioned in the old couplet was very treacherous, and was always carefully sounded before the coach ventured to cross. Sand tracks had to be staked out with furze-bushes, as the channel of a river is buoyed. Perilous difficulties were apprehended when nearing the Cartmel tongue of the Kent; the Leven sands beyond Cartmel and Ulverston were the worst of all. The poet Wordsworth told Mrs. Hemans, according to the lady's own letter, that he admired her exploit in crossing the Ulverston sands as a deed of derring-do, and as a decided proof of taste; and he truly added that the lake scenery is never seen to such advantage as after the passage of what he calls its majestic barrier. Before arriving at the Lake district we might in farewell turn our faces to the south, standing in imagination at Silverdale. There in the picture are the Wharton Crags, with houses great and small amongst their wooded feet; and then there are Bolton-le-Sands, Hestbank, Poulton-le-Sands (which to all intents and purposes is Morecambe), Heysham, and Lancaster Bay. It is a journey of twenty-six miles by rail from Lancaster to Ulverston, and the greater part of the distance is close to the shores of Morecambe Bay. The traveller going north, therefore, has the sea laving the tract to his left, and always, as an alternative prospect, rock, wood, stream, bushy dales and retiring glens to the right. From the sea the fishermen obtain great store of shrimp and flat fish. There are border guard-houses, such as Arnside Tower; and in reaching Hawes Tarn (which is said to be affected somehow by the rise and fall of the tide) groves of larch and pine, with a plenteous undergrowth of gorse and ling, offer themselves to the view. Picturesque Holme Island, at the mouth of the Kent, and the ruins of Peel Castle on the islet of that name, enter into the picture in other directions.