The crag is of so curious a formation geologically, that I can’t fancy
  the poet describing his memory of it, without calling it a terraced
  hill, or an ascent by natural terraces.

Then, again, the prospect is not sufficiently extended from it.  The stream not near enough, or rather not of size enough, to be heard.  Blelham Tarn is not too far to have added to the watery sound, it is true, but the wind we suppose to have been north-east, and the sound of the Blelham Tarn would be much carried away from him.

  The present stone wall is not near the summit, and is of comparatively
  recent date.  It is difficult to believe from the slope of the outcrop
  of rock that a wall could ever have been at the summit.

  But there are two other vantage grounds intermediate between those
  extremes, both of which were probably in the mind and memory of the
  poet as he described the scene, and

    ’The intermitting prospect of the copse. 
    And plain beneath,’

  allowed him by the mist.  One of these is the High Crag, about
  three-quarters of a mile from the divergence or convergence of the two
  highways, which Dr. Cradock has selected.

There can be no doubt that this is the crag ‘par excellence’ for a wide and extended look-out over all the country between Outgate and Ambleside.  Close at its summit there remain aged thorn trees, but no trace of a wall.

But High Crag can hardly be said to have risen at ’the meeting-point of two highways,’ unless we are to understand the epithet ‘far-stretched’ as applying to the south-western slopes or skirts of the hill; and the two highways, the roads between Water Barngates on the west, and the bridle road between Pullwyke and Outgate at their Outgate junction, and this is rather too far a stretch.

  It is quite true that if bridle paths can be described as highways,
  there may be said to be a meeting-point of these close at the
  north-eastern side of the crag.

But, remembering that the ponies came from Penrith, the driver was not likely to have had any intimate knowledge of these bridle paths; while, at the same time, on that misty day, I much question whether the boys on the look-out at High Crag could have seen ponies creeping along between walled roads at so great a distance as half a mile or more.

  And this would seem to have been the problem for them on that day.

I ought in fairness to say that it is not likely that the roads were then (as to-day) walled up high on either side.  To-day, even from the summit of High Crag, only the head and ears of a pony could be seen as it passed up the Water Barngates Road; but at the end of last century many of the roads were only partially walled off from the moorlands they passed over in the Lake Country.

  Still, as I said, High Crag was a point of vantage that the poet, as a
  lad, must have often climbed, in this part of the country, if he
  wanted to indulge in the delights of panoramic scene.