Crummock is just twice the length of Buttermere, with about the same average width of half a mile. Like the other, it is pressed between the feet of steep mountains, and has the same charm at the open and upper end of silvery strand shelving from meadowy banks, with the same clusters of fir, alder, or gnarled oak grouped gracefully about the grassy shore. Here, too, on still summer days the same crystal water shows far out into the lake the clean, white, gravelly bottom on which it lies. There are two or three boats, moreover, available on Crummock, and it is out on the bosom of the lake that this whole beautiful vale, above and below it, is displayed perhaps to the best advantage. The now remoter heights of Honister and its companions fill the head. The steeps of High Stile and Red Pike dip to the gorge near by, whence issues the hoarse murmur of Scale Force making its sheer leap of a hundred and twenty feet, and spraying with perennial moisture the ferns, mosses, and feathery saplings that cling to its shaggy cliffs. Above the lower heights upon the eastern shores rise the higher fells of Whiteside and Grassmoor, the latter bearing the strange unhealed red scars where its whole front was shaved away a century and a half ago by a tremendous waterspout.
A May morning out on Crummock, the fly rod laid aside in despair for the moment with its capricious little trout, though the compensations forbid so untoward a word; the boat drifting idly with gently gurgling keel upon the faint ripples stirred by the very softest of zephyrs; the distant murmur of the Cocker splashing toward the lake head; the faint dull roar of Scale Force, and, above all, the silent throng of overhanging mountains fairly pealing with the cuckoo's note, is a memory always to be treasured. Another such morning, too, comes back to me, when splashes of brilliant blue lay here and there upon the eastern shore of the lake, disclosing to a nearer view great beds of bluebells at the height of their glory. A moonlight night again, the sequel of the same or another such effulgent day, is before me as, idly trolling for the bigger trout, those prowlers of the night, one felt the awesome black shapes of the mountains piled up on every hand, while the slow, measured stroke of the oar struck molten silver as we crossed and recrossed the moon's shining path.