Peel Island, Cumbria with of woodland, in 1932. Peel Island is considered to be one of the origins of the fictional Wild Cat Island in the 1930 book "Swallows and Amazons" and its sequels, by Arthur Ransome. Taqui Altounyan, sister of Roger Altounyan and inspiration for one of the characters in "Swallows and Amazons", described Peel Island in her semi-biographical novel "In Aleppo Once" as "like a green tuffet, sitting in the water, the trees covering the rocks". The island also features in W. G. Collingwood's novel "Thorstein of the Mere, A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland". Ransome, at the age of
Amazons These Amazons started from Libya, passed through Egypt and Syria, and stopped at the Caïcus in Aeolis, near which they founded several cities. Later, he says, they established Mytilene a little way beyond the Caïcus. Aeschylus, in Prometheus Bound, places the original home of the Amazons in the country about Lake Maeotis and they later moved to Themiscyra on the Thermodon. Homer tells that the Amazons were sought and found somewhere near Lycia. Notable queens of the Amazons are Penthesilea, who participated in the Trojan War, and her sister Hippolyta, whose magical girdle, given to her by her father Ares,