Greta Hall.
Dearest Sara.....
Moss Force
The remainder of the torrent is marked out by three great waterfalls - the lowermost apron-shaped, and though the rock down which it rushes is an inclined plane, it shoots off in such an independence of the rock as shews that its direction was given it by the force of the water from above. The middle, which in peaceable times would be two tinkling falls, formed in this furious rain one great water-wheel endlessly revolving and double the size and height of the lowest. The third and highest is a mighty one indeed; it is twice the height of both the others added together, nearly as high as Scale Force, but it rushes down an inclined plane - and does not fall, like Scale Force. However, if the plane had been smooth, it is so near a perpendicular that it would have appeared to fall - but it is indeed so fearfully savage, and black, and jagged, that it tears the flood to pieces - and one great black outjutment divides the water, and overbrows and keeps uncovered a long slip of jagged black rock beneath, which gives a marked character to the whole force. What a sight it is to look down on such a cataract! - the wheels, that circumvolve in it - the leaping up and plunging forward of that infinity of pearls and glass bulbs - the continual change of the Matter, the perpetual sameness of the Form - it is an awful Image and Shadow of God and the World. When I reached the very top, where the stream flows level, there were feeding three darling sheep, with their red ochre letters on their sides, as quiet as if they were by a rill in a flat meadow, flowing clear over smooth tressy water-weeds, and through by long grass - Bless their dear hearts what darlings mountain sheep are!...
I went to Lodore on Sunday - it was finer than I had ever seen it before. Never were there three waterfalls so different from each other, as Lodore, Buttermere Halse Fall [ Moss Force], and Scale Force. Scale Force is a proper fall between two very high and narrow walls of rock, well tree'd - yet so that the trees rather add to, than lessen the precipice walls Buttermere Halse Fell is a narrow, open, naked torrent with three great water-slopes individualised in it one above another, large, larger, largest. Lodore has its walls, but they are scarcely walls, they are wide apart, and not upright, and their beauty and exceeding majesty take away the terror - and the torrent is broad and wide, and from top to bottom it is small waterfalls, abreast, and abreast. Buttermere Halse Fall is the War-song of a Scandinavian Bard. Lodore is the Precipitation of the fallen Angels from Heaven, Flight and Confusion, and Distraction, but all harmonized into one majestic thing by the genius of Milton, who describes it Lodore is beyond all rivalry the first and best thing of the whole Lake Country. Indeed (but we cannot judge at all from prints) I have seen nothing equal to it in the prints and sketches of the Scotch and Swiss Cataracts.
Lodore Falls
Samuel Taylor-Coleridge: 1802