Friday, November 9th.—­Rain, as yesterday, till 10 o’clock, when we took a boat to row down the lake.  The day improved,—­clouds and sunny gleams on the mountains.  In the large bay under Place Fell, three fishermen were dragging a net,—­picturesque group beneath the high and bare crags!  A raven was seen aloft:  not hovering like the kite, for that is not the habit of the bird; but passing on with a straight-forward perseverance, and timing the motion of its wings to its own croaking.  The waters were agitated; and the iron tone of the raven’s voice, which strikes upon the ear at all times as the more dolorous from its regularity, was in fine keeping with the wild scene before our eyes.  This carnivorous fowl is a great enemy to the lambs of these solitudes; I recollect frequently seeing, when a boy, bunches of unfledged ravens suspended from the church-yard gates of H——­, for which a reward of so much a head was given to the adventurous destroyer.—­The fishermen drew their net ashore, and hundreds of fish were leaping in their prison.  They were all of the kind called skellies, a sort of fresh-water herring, shoals of which may sometimes be seen dimpling or rippling the surface of the lake in calm weather.  This species is not found, I believe, in any other of these lakes; nor, as far as I know, is the chevin, that spiritless fish, (though I am loth to call it so, for it was a prime favourite with Isaac Walton,) which must frequent Ullswater, as I have seen a large shoal passing into the lake from the river Eamont. Here are no pike, and the char are smaller than those of the other lakes, and of inferior quality; but the grey trout attains a very large size, sometimes weighing above twenty pounds.  This lordly creature seems to know that ‘retiredness is a piece of majesty;’ for it is scarcely ever caught, or even seen, except when it quits the depths of the lake in the spawning season, and runs up into the streams, where it is too often destroyed in disregard of the law of the land and of Nature.

Quitted the boat in the bay of Sandwyke, and pursued our way towards Martindale along a pleasant path—­at first through a coppice, bordering the lake, then through green fields—­and came to the village, (if village it may be called, for the houses are few, and separated from each other,) a sequestered spot, shut out from the view of the lake.  Crossed the one-arched bridge, below the chapel, with its ’bare ring of mossy wall,’ and single yew-tree.  At the last house in the dale we were greeted by the master, who was sitting at his door, with a flock of sheep collected round him, for the purpose of smearing them with tar (according to the custom of the season) for protection against the winter’s cold.  He invited us to enter, and view a room built by Mr. Hasell for the accommodation of his friends at the annual chase of red deer in his forests at the head of these dales.  The room is fitted up in the sportsman’s style, with a cupboard for bottles