Page:Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth (Macmillan, 1897) (IA cu31924104001478).pdf/253

 which were very few: there was the village of Luss, the two gentlemen’s houses, our favourite cottages, and here and there a hut; but I do not recollect any comfortable- looking farm-houses, and on the opposite shore not a single dwelling. The whole scene was a combination of natural wildness, loveliness, beauty, and barrenness, or rather bareness, yet not comfortless or cold; but the whole was beautiful. We were too far off the more distant shore to distinguish any particular spots which we might have regretted were not better cultivated, and near Luss there was no want of houses.

After we had left the island, having been so much taken with the beauty of the bark hut and the little lake by which it appeared to stand, we desired the boatman to row us through it, and we landed at the hut. Walked upon the island for some time, and found out sheltered places for cottages. There were several woodmen’s huts, which, with some scattered fir-trees, and others in jrre- gular knots, that made a delicious murmuring in the wind, added greatly to the romantic effect of the scene. They were built in the form of a cone from the ground, like savages’ huts, the door being just large enough for aman to enter with stooping. Straw beds were raised on logs of wood, tools lying about, and a forked bough of a tree was generally suspended from the roof in the middle to hang a kettle upon. It was a place that might have been just visited by new settlers. I thought of Ruth and her dreams of romantic love:

And then he said how sweet it were, A fisher or a hunter there,

A gardener in the shade,

Still wandering with an easy mind, To build a household fire, and find A home in every glade.

We found the main lake very stormy when we had left the shelter of the islands, and there was again a threatening of rain, but it did not come on. I wanted

P'See Awzz, stanza xill,—ED.