Below this, the shores become more indented and more picturesque; the hills around do not fall off into tameness, as at the feet of some of the lakes. On the right is the Beacon, with its cairn conspicuous at 835 feet above sea; on the left, Selside rises to 1,015 feet. Opposite is Brown How, or Brown Hall, prettily built at the water's edge; and on the long nab that stretches half-way across the lake is the old mansion of Water Park (A. P. Bridson, Esq.).
The gondola slows down and rounds to the little pier, on one of the loveliest bits of all our lakeland scenery. Five minutes' walk takes you up to the Lakebank Hotel, and from its terrace--still better from the knoll above it when the surrounding trees are bare or lopped--the view embraces (beginning from the left) the Beacon, Dow Crags, the Old Man, and Weatherlam; Helvellyn, with Yewdale Crag and Raven Crag beneath; Fairfield and Scandale Head, with Loughrigg below (Red Screes and Ill Bell are not visible), and the lake's whole length with all its wooded promontories. To the right, across the water, the village of Nibthwaite, with cottages nestling under the steep and rocky mountain edge, and ruined quay which formed, before the railway tapped the traffic of Coniston, the terminus of its ancient waterway.
Formerly this lake, like Derwentwater, boasted a floating island--a mass of weeds and water plants detached from the bottom, and carrying enough solid matter to make it a kind of natural raft. In the floods and storms of October, 1846, it was stranded near Nibthwaite, and remained thenceforward indistinguishable from the rest of the shore.
Thurston Water used to be famous for its char, which were thought to be even finer and better than those of Windermere. Sir Daniel Fleming of Rydal notes in his account book, under the date February 19th, 1662 (1663, new style):--"Given unto Adam Fleming for bringing eleven dozen of charres from Conistone, for four pies 1s. 6d.;" and he used to send presents of Coniston char pies, as the most acceptable of delicacies, to his distinguished friends in London. In the middle part of the nineteenth century the turbid or poisonous matter washed into the lake by the streams from the copper mines, then in full work, is said to have killed off both char and trout; but it is an ill-wind that blows nobody good, and the cessation of copper mining has left the water pure again. The Angling Association has restocked the lake from Windermere, and is breeding fish by thousands from spawn in its pond near Coniston Hall. Both the red char (the larger sort, with red bellies and red pectoral fins) and the silver char (with silvery backs and orange bellies) are now caught, and opportunities for fishermen are increasing with every year.