certainly shook hands underneath it.  To do this we had to lie down, and it was not without a feeling of danger that we did so, with so many hundreds of tons of rock above our heads, and the thought that if the rock had given way a few inches we should have been reduced to a mangled mass of blood and bones.  Our friendly greeting was not of long duration, and we were pleased when the ceremony was over.  There is a legend that in ancient times the natives of Borrowdale endeavoured to wall in the cuckoo so that they might have perpetual spring, but the story relates that in this they were not entirely successful, for the cuckoo just managed to get over the wall.  We now continued our journey to find the famous Yew Trees of Borrowdale, which Wordsworth describes in one of his pastorates as “those fraternal four of Borrowdale”: 

                 But worthier still of note
  Are those fraternal four of Borrowdale,
  Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
  Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth
  Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
  Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;
  Nor uniformed with Phantasy, and looks
  That threaten the profane; a pillared shade,
  From whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
  By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
  Perennially—­beneath whose sable roof
  Of boughs, as if for festal purpose decked
  With unrejoicing berries—­ghostly shapes
  May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope,
  Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton,
  And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate,
  As in a natural temple scattered o’er
  With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
  United worship; or in mute repose
  To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
  Murmuring from Glaramara’s inmost caves.

[Illustration:  BORROWDALE AND SEATHWAITE]

It was a lonely place where the four yew trees stood, though not far from the old black lead works which at one time produced the finest plumbago for lead pencils in the world.  As the rain was falling heavily, we lit a fire under the largest of the four trees, which measured about twenty-one feet in circumference at four feet from the ground, and sheltered under its venerable shade for about an hour, watching a much-swollen streamlet as it rolled down the side of a mountain.

Near the yew trees there was a stream which we had to cross, as our next stage was over the fells to Grasmere; but when we came to its swollen waters, which we supposed came from “Glaramara’s inmost Caves,” they were not “murmuring” as Wordsworth described them, but coming with a rush and a roar, and to our dismay we found the bridge broken down and portions of it lying in the bed of the torrent.  We thought of a stanza in a long-forgotten ballad: 

  London Bridge is broken down! 
  Derry derry down, derry derry down!