Luckily we found a footbridge lower down the stream.  It was now necessary to inquire our way at one of the isolated farms in the neighbourhood of Borrowdale, where the people knew very little of what was going on in the world outside their own immediate environs.  We heard a story relating to the middle of the eighteenth century, when in the absence of roads goods had to be carried on horseback.  A rustic, who had been sent for a bag of lime, the properties of which were unknown in remote places, placed the bag on the back of his horse, and while he was returning up the hills the rain came on, soaking the bag so that the lime began to swell and smoke.  The youth thought that it was on fire, so, jumping off his horse, he filled his hat with water from the stream and threw it on the bag.  This only made matters worse, for the lime began smoking more than ever; so he lifted it from the horse’s back and placed it in the water at the edge of the stream, where, in addition to smoking, it began to boil and to make a hissing sound, which so frightened the young man that he rode home in terror, feeling sure that it was the Devil who had sneaked inside the bag!

We made our way to a farmhouse which we could see in the distance, but the farmer advised us not to attempt to cross the fells, as it was misty and not likely to clear up that day.  So we turned back, and in about two miles met a countryman, who told us we could get to Grasmere over what he called the “Green Nip,” a mountain whose base he pointed out to us.  We returned towards the hills, but we had anything but an easy walk, for we could find no proper road, and walked on for hours in a “go as you please” manner.  Our whereabouts we did not know, since we could only see a few yards before us.  We walked a long way up hill, and finally landed in some very boggy places, and when the shades of evening began to come on we became a little alarmed, and decided to follow the running water, as we had done on a very much worse occasion in the north of Scotland.  Presently we heard the rippling of a small stream, which we followed, though with some difficulty, as it sometimes disappeared into the rocks, until just at nightfall we came to a gate at the foot of the fells, and through the open door of a cottage beheld the blaze of a tire burning brightly inside.  We climbed over the gate, and saw standing in the garden a man who stared so hard at us, and with such a look of astonishment, that we could not have helped speaking to him in any case, even had he not been the first human being we had seen for many hours.  When we told him where we had come from, he said we might think ourselves lucky in coming safely over the bogs on such a misty day, and told us a story of a gentleman from Bradford who had sunk so deeply in one of the bogs that only with the greatest difficulty had he been rescued.