When Craft had finished, she exclaimed, “I would that every woman in the British Empire, could hear that tale as I have, so that they might know how their own sex was treated in that boasted land of liberty.”  It seems strange to the people of this county, that one so white and so lady-like as Mrs. Craft, should have been a slave and forced to leave the land of her nativity and seek an asylum in a foreign country.  The morning after our arrival, I took a stroll by a circuitous pathway to the top of Loughrigg Fell.  At the foot of the mount I met a peasant, who very kindly offered to lend me his donkey, upon which to ascend the mountain.  Never having been upon the back of one of these long eared animals, I felt some hesitation about trusting myself upon so diminutive looking a creature.  But being assured that if I would only resign myself to his care and let him have his own way, I would be perfectly safe, I mounted, and off we set.  We had, however, scarcely gone fifty rods, when, in passing over a narrow part of the path and overlooking a deep chasm, one of the hind feet of the donkey slipped, and with an involuntary shudder, I shut my eyes to meet my expected doom; but fortunately the little fellow gained his foothold, and in all probability saved us both from a premature death.  After we had passed over this dangerous place, I dismounted, and as soon as my feet had once more gained terra firma, I resolved that I would never again yield my own judgment to that of any one, not even to a donkey.

It seems as if Nature has amused herself in throwing these mountains together.  From the top of the Loughrigg Fell, the eye loses its power in gazing upon the objects below.  On our left, lay Rydal Mount, the beautiful seat of the late poet Wordsworth.  While to the right, and away in the dim distance, almost hidden by the native trees, was the cottage where once resided Mrs. Hemans.  And below us lay Windermere, looking more like a river than a lake, and which, if placed by the side of our own Ontario, Erie or Huron, would be lost in the fog.  But here it looks beautiful in the extreme, surrounded as it is by a range of mountains that have no parallel in the United States for beauty.  Amid a sun of uncommon splendour, dazzling the eye with the reflection upon the water below, we descended into the valley, and I was soon again seated by the fireside of our hospitable hostess.  In the afternoon of the same day, we took a drive to the “Dove’s Nest,” the home of the late Mrs. Hemans.

We did not see the inside of the house, on account of its being occupied by a very eccentric man, who will not permit a woman to enter the house, and it is said that he has been known to run when a female had unconsciously intruded herself upon his premises.  And as our company was in part composed of ladies, we had to share their fate, and therefore were prevented from seeing the interior of the Dove’s Nest.  The exhibitor of such a man would be almost sure of a prize at the great Exhibition.