Before I was half up the "Kirkstone" mountain, the
storm had wetted me through and through, and before I reached the top it
was so wild and outrageous, that it would have been unmanly to have
suffered the poor woman (guide) to continue pushing on, up against such
a torrent of wind and rain: so I dismounted and sent her home with the
storm in her back. I am no novice in mountain mischiefs, but such a
storm as this was, I never witnessed, combining the intensity of the
cold, with the violence of the wind and rain. The rain drops were pelted
or slung against my face by the gusts, just like splinters of flint, and
I felt as if every drop cut my flesh. My hands were all shrivelled up
like a washer-woman's, and so benumbed that I was obliged to carry my
stick under my arm. O, it was a wild business! Such hurry skurry of
clouds, such volleys of sound! In spite of the wet and the cold, I
should have had some pleasure in it, but for two vexations; first, an
almost intolerable pain came into my right eye, a smarting and burning
pain; and secondly, in consequence of riding with such cold water under
my seat, extremely uneasy and burthensome feelings attacked my groin, so
that, what with the pain from the one, and the alarm from the other, I
had "no enjoyment at all"!
Just at the brow of the hill I met a man dismounted, who could not sit
on horse-back.
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