The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the South and West CoastsVarious
History
The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the South and West Coasts
Various
Great Britain -- Description and travel; Rivers -- Great Britain
Very pleasing to the eye are the undulating shores, and the green
of the grass, and the foliage of Windermere at its southern end. At
Lakeside it is so narrow that it is hard to put your finger on the spot
where the /Leven/ begins, though, for want of a better, Newby
Bridge, as shown in the illustration (p. 284), will serve. The Leven,
as before remarked, is the last link of our Windermere chain, but after
Rothay and Brathay, and the becks with their forces and falls, we need
give it but the consideration which is due to an outlet bearing to the
sea such waters as Windermere does not want, through the long tortuous
channel in the sandy wastes of Morecambe Bay.
* * * * *
The /Crake/ river falls into the Leven so near its mouth that it
might almost claim to be a tributary. But it is independent and apart
in its character and mission. It belongs to Coniston Water, as Leven
belongs to Windermere; and the commonplace scenery of its short course,
with its trio of bridges, is another mark of similarity. All that is
noticeable around Coniston lake is at the upper portion. The steamer
pier is at Waterhead, the village and station are half a mile inland;
the Old Man of Coniston (2,633 feet), whom generations of climbers
have been proud to attack, is in the same direction, and Yewdale and
its tarn, howes, crags and fells are towards the north. The coaching
traveller may feast his eyes upon the lancet-shaped water, some five
miles long from Schoolbeck at the upper or from the Crake at the lower
terminal, and of a uniform width of about half a mile; while the upward
trip from Lake Bank affords clear and happy views of the mountains of
which the Old Man is the irrepressible head. Off the high road opposite
Coniston Hall, a farmhouse once the Westmorland seat of the Le Fleming
family, is Brantwood, associated with the names of Gerald Massey, poet
and self-made man, of Linton the engraver, and of Ruskin, great as any
of those giants of literature whose names are linked with Lakeland.
* * * * *
The river /Duddon/ as a thing of beauty has often been
overpraised, no less an authority than Wordsworth setting the example
when, in his "Scenery of the Lakes," he says it may be compared, such
and so varied are its beauties, with any river of equal length in any
country. Yet there are streams in Wales, and even in the north of
England, which their admirers would not hesitate to rank above it. It
rises upon Wrynose Fell, on the confines of Westmorland, Cumberland,
and Lancashire, and for twenty-five miles or so is the boundary
between the two latter counties. It possesses, no doubt, a certain
picturesqueness, having its wild mountain phases, its torrents roaring
around obstructive rocks, its passage through fertile meadows, and at
last its slow ending through the everlasting sands to an open outlet
into the Irish Sea at the north end of Walney Island.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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