Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

The ancient now leant his rod against the bridge to execute some minor repairs, and was about to give me details of a wondrous catch of thirty years ago, when the air darkened and a warning dampness in the breeze sent me to seek shelter among the trees.

When I took the road again, my route was toward the great Burn Moor. The Willan, which I had to cross, is a rivulet of moods. Generally its bed is occupied by a succession of verdure-hid, deep, clear pools, joined by narrow gurgling ribbons of water; but now there issued from its granite dell a mighty surge of sound, and the flickering of a waterfall through the trees behind the cluster of houses called Boot caused me to turn aside. Down a great elbow of rock the rivulet was dashing. Here a creamy spout shot from some hidden cleft clear of the cliff, and crashed to spray on the boulders far below. This protruding slab of mossy rock a thin film of water tardily welled over. The harebell so precariously anchored to that ledge is hidden from sight; perhaps a stalk or two will be plucked away by the rude stream. Yet when Willan retires to seek its wonted way, nodding bells of azure blue will again uprear, a little bespattered with foam, yet perfect and strong, held into that hospitable cleft. But the main fosse is a little to the right. In three leaps it comes down fifty feet, throwing up a spume which is tinted by the sunbeams into a halo of rainbow hue. A few minutes later, as I passed up the steep mountain road, I turned for another look at Eskdale, the home of torrent. Great regiments of larches clothe the southern hills; the other side is festooned in green of fern and grass. From seaward the hills rise bolder and more rugged, with offshooting castles of jagged rocks overstanding the dale, with rifted gullies and gnarled woods where

‘with sparkling foam a small cascade
Illumines, from within, the leafy shade.’

Like a silver streak, the Esk wanders down the centre of the dale, with here and there dwindled cots and farms and fields and kine beside. A duskiness, forerunner of another stormlet, sweeps along, dimming the lustre of water and moist land. The sky is streaked with stretching pennons of rain-cloud, and I—I, with ne’er a cape to protect me—am standing on a bleak fell-track, far from shelter. I am neither hero nor philosopher to accept trials kindly, but I strongly wished to reach Windermere at nightfall, so heeded less the drenching shower. Care for health—the young are proverbially careless; but if, when your clothes are completely saturated, you never allow your body to lose its temperature, a wetting more or less need not appal you. For years used to such inconvenience, I can only add that this theory is also practice with me.

Ere the top of the ascent was reached, the brief splashing shower had rushed on into the mountains. Across the cleft of the dale, right opposite me, from an unseen distance of moorland, a mighty torrent was pouring over the edge of a precipice. This was Birker Force.

‘Resistless, roaring, dreadful, down it comes
From the rude mountain and the mossy wild,
Tumbled through rocks abrupt, and sounding far.’

The air was filled with the varied voices of many waters: gurglings from the near-at-hand springs and runnels; tinklings from the rivulets dropping down narrow rifts in the moor; the rattle of the torrent speeding down the centre of the upland declivity; and a dull, insistent roar carried up to the heights from the Willan cascade, the rock-racked Esk, and it might be from the far-away water-cloud of Birker.

My track across the moor was a bit inconsequent: sheep-tracks and man-tracks, anything trending in the right direction, were followed. Of course, the long tracts of bog had to be avoided—water oozed from them as from a huge sponge. In addition to these places, the whole moor was full of springs. Among the roots of heather were many up-currents, some with orifices six inches square; and their volumes spouted out with force, too, jets nearly a foot high being common. Had not my boots been filled long ago with the drops brushed from heather and bracken, I might have avoided these fountains, but under the circumstances I recked but little. Wide sheets of water were pouring down every slack, and I waded such as they were met. At one point from a pile of boulders I counted fifteen springs within ten feet.

Just as another crash of rain came along I sighted Burnmoor Tarn. An old poacher of my acquaintance holds this water in high esteem; the trout are big and easily caught, he says. I have not tried the place: the fishing is private.

Standing by the darkling waters a splendid view is around. Wastwater Screes raise a green boundary to the left, to the right the ridges rise to Great Howe, and finally to Scawfell. An easy route up the last-named mountain is well in sight. A great pyramid of cloud rests beyond Wastdale, the dusky gulfs of Black Sail and Mosedale alone being seen below it. My route for the present lay straight ahead, over the narrow hause toward Wastdale. Twenty minutes on I am at the summit. A bright blaze of sunshine lights up Wastwater and the great circle of silurian rocks around it. In the level valley the eye first catches the yews, and then the modest gray church. This is the smallest in England. The conundrum and boast of a Wastdalian, when asked his birthplace, is: ‘Ah cum fra whar there’s t’ hee’ist moontain, deepest lake, lilest kirk, an’ t’ biggest leer in aw England', [I come from where there is the highest mountain, the deepest lake, the smallest church, and the biggest liar in all England]. But the sound of a foxhound’s voice, shrill as of a pleased puppy, carries my mind to men rather than views—to Will Ritson and the old Parson. I have a story of these two, not new, and perhaps incomplete, which appertains at least to Wastdale. Many years ago a wandering fox played particular havoc among the flocks. Guns and dogs failing to close his account, one Sunday morning a party of dalesmen assaulted the earth he lay in with terrier and crowbar. However, while they attacked the front, Reynard escaped by a side-channel, and was speeding away for a securer home, when an alarm was raised. Collie and bobtail, hound and terrier, streamed across the hillside in pursuit. The fox headed for Mickledore, and was crossing at great speed the level fields near the church, when a worshipper—this happened in the days of long sermons—taking a mid-service stroll, raised a wild ‘Tallyho!’ and rushed back into the church, shouting: ‘Here’s t’ Ennerdale girt dog chassing for its life.’ The droning homily from the pulpit was instantly lost in the clatter of clogs on the flagged floor, as pell-mell the congregation—men, women, and children—rushed out to join in the pursuit. If the parson sighed at this abandonment of the service, he did it in brief time, for a moment later his surplice was hanging on the pulpit-rail and he far afield, labouring to catch up his parishioners. Down with the fox! then and now, is the watchword of fells shepherding.

Some short distance I descended toward the vale; then, calculating that the time in hand allowed me to take an alternative course over Scawfell Pike, I deflected from the path and faced the wearisome side of Lingmell. As I rose higher my view seaward widened, and beyond the yellow sands of the Cumbrian coast I could see here and there a steamer shaping its course. Of course, the air was preternaturally clear, and even minute points came up sharply. Just as I climbed the last wall, a little man in homespun came along the upper track. I spoke to him, and he told me he was out ‘looking his sheep.’ Many of them had been affected by ‘t’ wicks,’ and he had had an anxious time, accordingly. ‘But,’ he added, ‘it’s nowt to what feeding them in winter time is for clash [wet weather] and hard work.’ I asked him if he had ever been caught in a snowstorm while in charge of sheep. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘and I don’t want to. The fells here are that full of rocks and cliffs that it’s dangerous work groping about in a thick snowshower.’ Remembering an experience of my own not three miles from this, when a squall of January’s whitest enveloped us without a minute’s warning, I agreed. Only good luck brought us out of that incident happily, for every landmark was either deep under snow or hidden by the murkiness prevailing. The shepherd told of searches by lantern-light for missing neighbours; no harm to life or limb had befallen any that he knew of, though the perils had been often great. Sometimes, he said, benighted tourists had to be sought for, but usually such were easily traced.

After walking about half a mile with me, my companion excused himself, saying that his flock lay towards Lord’s Rake, on the other side of the brawling torrent. A few whistles and arm-swayings, and his two dogs were running far away, routing out stragglers from among the rocks and driving an ever-increasing band of sheep forward and upward. I followed the stony track to the top of Lingmell, and across a peat-stained expanse toward the last pitch of Scawfell Pike. A low cloud, distended and black with rain, had swept along and swamped out of sight the region ahead of me. I had reached the edge of the mist, when the thought of keeping level along the hillside struck me. I was now about 2,800 feet above sea-level, within 500 feet of the summit, and my proposed traverse was a new piece of work to me. From the top of the ridge you can see little of this abrupt slope; from the bottom the detail of its facets and slacks is lost.

Huge splinters of stone lay on all sides, fragments which had fallen from above, and over these I clambered. Again and again I sidled along a narrow streaming ledge, steep rock above, a long gap below. Then the cloud began to shed rain in tremendous bursts, and the rocks became slippery. Once or twice I ventured along routes which, though promising at first, became impassable, and I had to get back to my starting-point as I could. When the stormlet was at its strongest there was suddenly from above a sharp rapping sound—like the reports of a Maxim gun—some little distance away. Five seconds or so the sound lasted; there was a brief pause as though the world of rigid stone and driving rain hung in the balance, then a magnificent crash of thunder seemed to make the rock veins start and quiver. The mighty sound came from a lower level, and I heard it re-echoing up the glen to Styehead, with many a backward-flung cadence. The play of lightning through the mist-wreaths was splendid. There was another roll of heaven’s-war drum as I picked my way across upper Piers Ghyll. How that great chine seemed to hold the sound, buffeting it from cliff to cliff, from foaming beck to lowering cloud! At last I judged it meet to turn my face up the hill, hoping to come near the path where the Esk springs from a small marsh. In ten minutes I was within earshot of a party of climbers, surprising them somewhat as I stepped through the curling mist almost into their midst.

IV. A SKETCH OF DUDDONSIDE

At the stepping-stones people on wandering bent generally cross, and, turning upstream, are soon within the mighty Duddon gorge, where founts of green water dash through barriers of piled-up rocks crowned with heather and brambles.

It was early autumn. Through the cool air came the notes of some of the later songsters, on the moors beds of green bracken still waved, but here and there single fronds were turning orange and crimson and yellow. Great bushes of glossy holly began to be noticeable on the crags as the brakes of hazel and whitethorn thinned off their summer foliage. On the bosky hillsides whitish patches of sphagnum were framed with bands of fiery red bog-grass. The dale was resonant to the turmoilings of water, down every ghyll foaming cataracts sprang, while here and there deep floods surged through the level woodlands. The air was marvellously clear, every knot and slack on the mountains showed plainly, and the fresh bright sunshine gave everything, from the caërn on the topmost crag of Wallabarrow to the wind-tangled bracken-beds near our path, a halo of glory. Here and there rabbits frisked to the shelter of burrow or fern, and once the half-choke of a cock-pheasant called his harem together to flee our approach. Along a path marked with pools of mud and water and studded with boulders we plunged into the low screen of oak and ash, and in a few minutes were beside the stepping-stones.

The river in front was at half-flood; the crossing was covered a foot deep with clear, racing water. Far upstream, waterbreaks were gleaming between gray boulders and many-tinted coppices; the roar as the current fretted through its rough channel came to our ears incessantly. In the shade of the larches we found an almost level path to our left, worn, doubtless, by sheep ranging the glades of these woods. A jay screamed and flew away, its blue side-feathers attracting the eye as it winged through the maze of stems. The river was again close beside—a deep pool in which the sunlit water seemed to collect strength to go babbling down an inclined beach of smoothed stones. The river-bank became tangled with brambles and dense coppice, so we turned into a mysterious hollow where perhaps centuries ago Duddon’s stream varied from its present bed. In a few yards we cleared the trees and stood by a hollow in the woods. The stream in its ancient course had here tarried awhile and delved out a circular pool before passing seaward. Here, perhaps, the red deer had come by moonlight to drink—I never ramble by Duddonside without my memory reverting to these animals, which less than a century ago roamed in wild freedom over the great silent wastes surrounding the valley. But now the bracken is rustled by wandering sheep, which turn and stare at such unusual visitors. We fringed this eddying place of a forgetful river, and dived into the dense coppice beyond, where brambles so hampered our path that we left the proximity of the water to find an old cart-track. On the hazel bushes a few nuts still hung, and twice there were glimpses of flying russet and white—squirrels disturbed at their repast. The old ‘gait’ found, we strolled steadily along: this wood in springtime must have been carpeted with blue; the fleshy green leaves of the bluebell protrude through layers of rotting leaves and twigs. But when autumn is at hand flowers are rare in the riverside woods—a solitary strawberry bloom, maybe, with here and there a belated primrose or daisy. What the sweet summer glory of this paradise has been is recalled by the wealth of dead honeysuckle trailers and the dried-up stems of many wildvines. Now, descending a sharp hillock, we are by the ford in Tarn beck. The steady murmur to our right warns us of near Duddon, and we resolve to walk down to where the waters meet. The saplings are so dense by the waterside that we again seek the less difficult woods, coming at last to a narrow path bounded by thorn-bushes, brambles, and the punishing boughs of the wild-rosetree. Ten yards on we are on the point where the two streams meet. Tarn beck has scooped itself a little bay, but the lordly Duddon here sleeps in a deep pool among the shingles.

What words can describe the contrast between the rattling, dashing rivulet and the great placid, sunlit stream into which it falls and is lost? On this very spot, amid a tangle of brambles and many fronded brackens, the great poet of the fells stood in imagination when he wrote:

‘Duddon ...
Who, ’mid a world of images imprest
On the calm depth of his transparent breast,
Appears to cherish most that Torrent white,
The fairest, softest, liveliest of them all.’

He saw it at ‘the busy hum of noon,’ when its ‘murmur musical’ promised refreshment to distant meadows needing rain; but what would he have written if he had seen it as we did, if he had seen the velvet green of the aftermath in the fields across the river, and noted the woods of autumn just flushing into realms of red and crimson and gold—if he had witnessed the glory of that October morning, when the air was instinct with light, and the ear was charmed with varied cadences of falling and rippling water? Then Wordsworth’s magic pen would have traced lines fairer far than those the scene actually inspired. But, alas! the mind of a trifler with Nature rises with difficulty to such enchanted heights nor stays there—for cunningly hid between the veiling undergrowth and the upspringing grass I espied the stem of a sapling ash with its branchlets roughly lopped off. For curiosity I drew this forth, and, lo! there, scraped on the tender gray-green bark, here and there—bitten through to the white wood—were the marks of the rings attached to the salmon-poacher’s bag-net. Wordsworth and the serene majesty of the morning were alike instantly forgotten in the contemplation of this sign of a ‘black art.’ It was simple enough to conjure up that scene of last night.

About a dozen salmon have collected in this pool, waiting for a flood to allow them to pass through the roaring, broken rapids of the gorge to spawning redds far above. For some hours vigilant eyes have been upon their movements, and now in the pitch darkness of midnight two men approach the riverside from opposite directions. Cautious signals are exchanged ere they meet behind a screen of bushes, and are repeated as they stealthily patrol the riversides. Then away in the woods near the stepping-stones the axe is plied with muffled vigour; the branches rustle with their neighbours as, the stem being severed, they are drawn downward. The steel is scarcely audible as the lesser limbs are struck away and the net-pole prepared. With hardly a sound the poacher threads his way through the coppices, and he is soon again by the pool’s marge.

In the meantime his comrade has drawn their net from beneath the concave bank, has laid it straight on the dank grass (there is the draggled, tramped sward), and soon has the rings fixed on the pole. Now all is ready, and the younger man takes the long shaft, and with a sweep draws the net into the pool. In a moment it becomes saturated and sinks, then is carefully drawn forward. The strain on the netsman is great; he bends to the task and puts forward his utmost strength, but in vain. He cannot force his contrivance against the current—here, though flowing soft, Duddon is really very powerful—so his comrade comes to his assistance.

By their united efforts the net is brought nearer land. As they bend over, the sheen from the water lights up the faces of the struggling men. There is satisfaction in every coarse and bloated line. As the net moves the surface of the pool becomes troubled, a fin or a tail cuts through the water: the salmon, though enmeshed, are exerting themselves to escape. But in vain, for, with an oath at the coldness of the water, the elder poacher steps into the pool, going deeper and deeper till the water rises to his shoulders, till he is able to force the pole and its heavily-laden bag-net to the surface and then ashore. In the clear depths his footmarks are traceable by the places where the moss was scraped from the stones by the hobnails of his boots.

The fish are rapidly killed and their carcases placed in bags (here and there a broken scale gleams silvern among the grass and shales); then, one carrying the unrigged net in addition to his load of salmon, the poachers are quickly lost to sight in the woods. Such is the story told by the abandoned net-pole and the shores of the robbed salmon-pool.

We turned aside from the river, scrambling up a steep clay bank, forcing a passage through a barricade of hazels, and in a couple of minutes were once again in a cleared area. Crossing this, in the shadow of the larch grove, here and there were quite considerable conical mounds, seemingly composed of dead sections of twigs. In and out of these by a thousand tunnel entrances were moving files of large black ants. These hills claimed our attention awhile. They were indeed cunningly built, and more than once a longing came to make an examination of their interiors. A scientist or a competent naturalist would have been justified in such an experiment, but not a pair of mere wanderers.

To compensate us, as it seemed, almost at once we heard a soft patter of paws and a soughing of delicate branches—a squirrel was dashing along the boughs not far away. As soon as the tree-bole was reached, the russet body whisked out of sight at great speed, but an eye kept on the point where it disappeared soon detected two sharp, tufted ears and a pair of bright eyes anxiously watching our movements. I called my companion’s attention to this, and so long as we refrained from movement the keen three-sided contemplation went on; but as soon as my arm stirred the little head was withdrawn, and I knew that four legs were carrying the squirrel swiftly up towards the crown of the tree. And, as anticipated, after the lapse of a few seconds the little animal reappeared on a branch quite a long way up, quietly observing us. The squirrels of Duddonside suffer little persecution by humans evidently, for this one had a curious, if rather distant, interest in us, and refused to be scared by any pretence at hostilities. Even as we moved away, a backward glance told us that the animal had altered its position to get a final glance, and was now hanging head downwards, peering at us from _under_ the branch it was sitting upon.

A few minutes more, and the swiftly-moving waters of Duddon appear through the straight larch-stems. We are close beside the impassable stepping-stones and our path back from the woods to the little hamlet by the church.

V. GHYLL-CLIMBING

Nearly the most miserable class in society contains those who have just fallen below distinction, while their efforts have raised them high above mediocrity. These persons are unjustly described by the brilliant as ‘the rank and file.’

In crag-climbing there are a few who seem to successfully emulate a fly or a spider in negotiating slippery rock walls, who can scramble unmoved along the sheerest precipices, or climb untiringly at the steepest ascents. Then come ‘the rank and file,’ whose deficiency of nerve or strength does not permit such risky work. Where do we find this class during the holiday season? Squatting under some towering crag, maybe, which it is their ambition to ascend, in the vain hope that familiarity with its outline will breed contempt for its dangers. Or spread-eagled in some dangerous situation, as the man who many years ago attempted to climb Piers Ghyll, a narrow, deep chasm in the side pf Scawfell Pike (Cumberland). He scrambled to a ledge nearly level with the waterfall which closes the direct ascent of this most majestic ghyll, then lost confidence, and dared neither advance nor retreat. Twenty-four hours’ exposure made him desperate enough to leap into the fall pool thirty feet beneath, in which manner he escaped.

‘A good cragsman is a good mountaineer’ is a proved axiom; but when the fells are so thoroughly and accurately mapped out, and paths are so distinctly traceable as they now are, few adventures happen to the careful man, and the fierce struggles which form the chief delight of crag-climbing are woefully lacking.

There is another branch of British fellscraft, however, which may meet with the favour of such persons, and which should be better known to everyone. But to discuss this it must be assumed that every climbing-machine, every rock-scrambler, has found his natural sport, for the man to whom this pastime is open must be able to discern grace and symmetry in the water-hewn rocks, picturesqueness in the beetling crags, and lively interest in the many charms of the ghylls of the fells.

A ghyll, it may be explained, is the hacked-out course of a fell, beck, or stream, and may be divided into three scenic sections: First, the approach, generally by a wide moorland glen, narrowing into a defile at its head, and choked with boulders of all sizes and shapes. The succeeding portion is the gully proper. The deepest waterfalls are here, as is also the hardest climbing. The lofty cliffs surrounding the fosse are split into irregular chimneys, yards wide rise spray-washed slabs without the slightest irregularity on their polished surfaces. The head of the ghyll is a return to the natural scenery of the fell. In some places this is reached by an easy grass ascent, in others after a rough scramble over piled fragments of rock.

A steep cornice may, however, bar the way, or the ghyll debouch into the hollow of a scree basin. Then comes a struggle upwards; the grit slides away at every step. The wide scree gully in which the stream of débris originates is reached, and progress becomes not a little dangerous. The rotten ‘mountain delight’ which your feet have set in motion slips away from loose rocks on the higher slopes, and down they bound at fearful rates. Keep in the shelter if you can, and wait for the solid rain to cease. You cannot dodge the flying pieces, for, however quick your eye may be in marking, the treacherous foothold does not permit rapid movement. And the speed some of these dislodged stones attain is wonderful. The writer remembers, when climbing a scree under Fairfield, seeing a portion of cliff topple over some hundred feet in front. It simply bounced through the air, struck a spur from the parent rock some dozen yards from him, and burst into dust and splinters. The crash was louder than the explosion of a fair-sized cannon, and the very mountain seemed to quiver at the shock. Had not a crevice afforded shelter from the mass of shingle which for some ten minutes whistled down the slope, these lines would never have been written.

Some ghylls are mere fissures in the mountainsides, with lofty cliffs rising sheer from their beck beds. In these the imprisoned water races down without a break on its surface, a yard wide, perhaps four deep. You scramble along the wall of rock and look down upon the scene, or laboriously work a way along the ledges, at every turn leaping the stream, leaving insecure foot and hand hold on one side for points equally insecure on the other. Then you come to a cataract; the brook tumbles over an abrupt rock into the deep and narrow basin, hollowed by and for itself. The gorge is closed; advance is at an end, retreat impossible, for there is not room on the narrow ledge in which to face about.

There against the skyline, forty feet or more up, is a splinter of harder rock which has separated itself from the cliff. Follow its bold outline to the water, where it forms the promontory between two minute bays. A tiny crack shows in the angle at the head of the cove, up which is the only way out; but there are five yards of mossy, damp crag between you and that. Carefully the body is pressed against the slippery surface, and a sidle forward commences, a notch, a microscopic chink affording precarious hold. The tiny bay is reached, and a few feet further is the crevice desired. An outcrop of felspar now forms a tiny escarpment above your head, and, holding to this, you drag along the sheer smooth breast of rock, your whole weight on your arms. If the ledge presents the slightest irregularity, your fingers will fail to grasp it, and down with a mighty splash you go into the dimpling pool. But the worst predicament is not eternal, and in ten seconds you have got into the cranny. After a short breather, up the chimney you struggle, wrist, forearm, thigh, and calf, all working at their fullest power. A gathering light comes in from the left through the cleft between the narrow crag and the cliff. A lightning flash, more powerful than wind or weather, has cracked the former in many places, making it dangerous to ascend. The platform behind, however, affords foothold, and you have another welcome rest. The roar of the waterfall fills your ears, and you look through the gap at it. How curiously near it seems!—you can almost step into its creamy spout. Splash, splash, thud, crunch—splash, splash, thud, crunch, in wearying reiteration comes up from the well below. Across the gulf a sheer cliff rises, lined and broken in its upper part as its twin on which you are clinging, but dropping, a broad smooth slab, into the whirlpool of the force beneath.

In other ghylls the climbing is less severe—these are the pretty, secluded glens by which the effluent of many a mountain tarn finds its way to the parent river. The first two miles of the one in mind are between bracken-covered slopes. Willows, mountain-ashes, and hollies flourish; the clear water rushes down rock-slides from pool to pool. But further up the scenery becomes wilder. The bed of the beck is strewn with large fragments of rock fallen from aloft, which are happily adapted to the many-shaped waterfalls displayed in the first short gully. There is some hazard in frequenting these places, as many a man has had proof. The shepherd has possibly seen the fall of an immense mass of rock into the shallow where a day or two previously his charge made halt to drink. I know one ghyll which in a single night was choked by the fall of a neighbouring cliff, so that a lovely waterfall was formed, with a deep pool above and another below the obstruction. Many a natural bridge of ‘chocked’ rock is formed by such an event. In the higher portion of this stream is a large tarn, and just before it is sighted the waters of the outflow are pent into a gorge between two mountains, and cascade after cascade breaks upon the view. Climb along the river-bed here; it is difficult and toilsome work, but the vantage is unique. The water churns round in a mad whirlpool here; a few yards in front it races towards us on what appears to be one lofty rock-shoot, but which discovers itself into a dozen separate falls. The water does not seem to fall from one to another of these; it is more of a single roll or a bound. Alert, bright trout dart about in transparent water, devouring whatever food the beck brings down—a hard-cased bracken clock which has attempted a flight beyond its power and perished, a soft mollusc torn from its rock home, or a caterpillar dislodged by the passing breeze from some twig.

Carefully coasting round a mossy corner into a recess from which the cheerful thunder of water proceeds, we enter a crag basin of remarkable charm. We find footing on a slab which almost spans the stream. It has peeled from the cliff above, and has been caught in its descent on a narrow ledge. The brook plashes against its sides, and grumbles under it to the outlet. The spray-damped cliffs are green with moss; down the gaps by which the springs from above reach their bourne hang long streamers of water-weed; a wren has taken possession of a dry pocket among the rocks opposite, and is surveying us suspiciously. It twitters and scolds, defies and threatens, but its trouble is for nothing. The niche in which it homes is impossible to reach, even if we were so minded. Green and gray and yellow, white and crimson and brown, are imparted to the drier precipices by the lichens; silvery birch boughs sway above, green-yellow roots hang into the turmoil of the water. A dipper dashing up the gully sees a human presence, hesitates a flash, then passes at accelerated speed, its wild song echoing over the drone and boom without a tremor or a pause. This rock hollow is merely one among many equally pretty, and pen, pencil, or brush fail to convey half its delights.

As the slippery cliffs afford no handhold on this side, we cross the slab, and attack a cleft down which dangle, as so many ropes, the roots of a mountain-ash. Holding to these, we easily gain the higher level of the glen, and make forward. Passing the mountain tarn, we enter the upper col; and among my many climbs, this has been the most unsatisfactory. It is a wild delve in the mountainside; steep banks of scree slope into it, with here and there a tongue-like bank of tawny grass.

The little stream purls and rattles by your side as you force your way over the yielding débris, promising a rocky and picturesque source. Higher and higher you struggle, and the water correspondingly shrinks in volume. The fanlike streams of shale and dust have here invaded the narrow dell, and you may hear the beck grumbling and spouting beneath the feet. Further up the ground seems to rise more abruptly, and your hopes rise, to be quickly dashed, for the stream is now too weak to burrow a course for itself. The moisture from a wide grassy basin percolates through dank green moss, tinkles in thin lines down the inequalities, or in wide glassy sheets slides—it cannot be said to flow—among the steeper rock-faces, accommodating itself to all angles without a sound or a splash. And this is the source of the stream you have so laboriously traced.

Another fine gully is entered from an old quarry. After carefully negotiating a succession of dripping slabs, on hands, and knees, you reach the darkened bed of a chasm. On the right the light is excluded by perpendicular rocks, crowned with a plantation of dark firs; on the left a less abrupt slope, covered with dainty oak-fern and evil-smelling ‘ramps,’ rises to a thicket of hazel, overtopped by ash saplings. A couple of these have fallen and form a living bridge high above the stream. Climb carefully here, and shun the ferny slope, for the thin bed of leaf-mould slides down with the slightest pressure. A misty gleam in front shows that the chasm widens; the noise of falling water proclaims a cataract, and soon its trough is reached. The tiny stream is descending a succession of mossy steps, now close to one bank, now to the other, wandering as it wills over the wide face of rock. In winter, when the spongy fell is thoroughly saturated, a huge volume crashes through this defile. Then the gorge is impossible to scale, the trough is a churn of angry, yellow-brown waters, and the tiny tinkle deepens to a majestic roar. Above the fall the water still descends in picturesque cascades, at one moment rushing pell-mell down a tiny crevice between smooth black rocks, playfully diving into a deep black dub at another. In one corner it divides round a green boulder, on which a few wisps of grass and a foxglove find sustenance; further up it passed an abrupt ledge in a pretty spout. The merriment of the brook seems to infect you, and you feel that you have lost a companion when you reach its source in the

‘Mere of the moorland,
Boulder-environed.’

Entering another ravine which has a most unpromising opening near the top of a slate-quarry, we notice stupendous crags which augur hard work. Their lower strata are, however, much broken, and the first emerald-green basin of water is easily passed; but further up a giant mass overhangs the ghyll. After carefully surveying both sides, a tiny jut is tried and found wanting. The adventurer loses hold on the rock and is immediately immersed in about ten feet of water. The other bank is examined more carefully, and a long traverse discovered. Along this we warily sidle, making holds for hands where possible. At a most awkward point the traverse comes to an end, and the way back has to be crawled at some risk.

The most dangerous gully incident was met when climbing by a waterfall. The rock (ironstone) was steep, but rotten. We directed our climb towards a block apparently about five feet in diameter. Perhaps this was finely poised on a bed of yielding sand or clay, for as soon as we got weight upon it over it toppled, narrowly missing crushing us against the wall. The boulder fell into the deep water, and, of course, we fell too. A wetting was a lucky finish to this adventure.

I well remember descending a very pretty ghyll—or was it the splendid conditions which made it so? It was a lovely morning, and we had climbed Kentmere High Street during the hours of dusk in order to see the sun rise. A long bank of purple haze had lain along the horizon, but the sun rapidly rose above this and flooded hill and valley, mountain and lake, in a very blaze of glory. At 5.30 we made a move towards Mardale, where we hoped to get some breakfast. Down the steep mountain-shoulder, where the path dodged among the boulders, we made rapid progress to Blea Water, the waters of which were rippling in a slight breeze. At the foot of the tarn we sat for awhile on the gray lichened slabs, enjoying the bright, warm morning sunshine. Then down the bracken-covered slope again to a small waterfall most picturesquely situated. The sun shone directly into its deep rocky basin, and every surge of the tumbling water was telegraphed to the eye in flash and glitter. Some mountain-ash-trees clung round the steep rock, their long roots, white and green, hanging dripping into the clear pool below. Seen under these indescribable circumstances, the sight was a very memorable one. It was only the pangs of hunger that forced us to move on.

One of the best expeditions for one who has a real liking for the smaller beauties of water and rock scenery is to Sacgill. This is at the head of Longsleddale, a long narrow valley of the usual Lakeland type, with an unusually cramped defile at the foot. Right in front, as you cross the narrow switchback bridge from the cluster of antiquated houses known as Sacgill, and turn up the edge of the torrent, are Harter Fell and Gray Crag, the abrupt front of the former continuing in Goat Scar, a pile of rough, fox-haunted crags. As the walk is proceeded with, a curious depression in the dalehead is reached—a flat entirely covered with stone, which at some distant time has evidently been a small tarn. Portions of this level are still banked up to make pools for sheep-washing, and a strong wall has been built across at the foot to prevent the loose débris washing at flood-time on the cultivated valley below. At the head of the depression comes our ghyll. At first the usual succession of small cataracts, each with its clear pool where the water swirls awhile ere escaping down the water-worn green slabs which constitute the steep river-bed. The path, or, rather, the sheep-track which serves this purpose, becomes steeper, and the falls correspondingly higher. You rise from the valley in a succession of mighty steps; the shelf on which you are standing prevents your seeing the route by which you came, giving in return a distant view of the valley shimmering in the bright sunshine, with, still further, range after range of moorish hills, with, here and there a rough cliff, till the distant sea closes the view.

You are now in the very jaws of the pass; a spur of Goat Scar approaches the stream from the left, and a tall corner of Gray Crag forces itself into the narrowing glen opposite. Now the more immediate river-banks rise higher, the rolling waters in front come by a swiftly descending curve. At this point we climb round the foot of the rocky bank, here some fifty feet high, and find a standing-place on a small beach. This is the only place in the rock basin where such a foothold is possible. Behind us the crags rise, covered with tiny clumps of mountain-sage, and fringed at their tops with waving bracken fronds. Beyond, higher and higher, rise the stony ridges to the crags, which strike the eye in whichever direction it is turned. The beck tumbles into the small cleft, and as yet its unbroken descent is out of sight, but the soft, liquid, churning sound betrays its presence.

As other venues fail us, a tough scramble up the grass-hung bank commences. From the bank of the gorge are several grand vertical views through luxuriant mountain-ashes of the stream dimpling in the deep crevice, and then of the waterfall, with its brink twenty feet beneath, its chasm fully fifty. Further on come a number of pretty cascades; then you emerge from a water-hewn gallery on a level with the stream. As the pass widens, a belt of tough slaty rocks is approached, and down these the beck shoots. Not a bush grows near—we are at too high an elevation—and the view savours of desolation. Damp, green rocks pall; the succession of streams sliding almost noiselessly down long smooth surfaces becomes monotonous; ridge after ridge of stony fells give a dreary impression. But just where the pass opens into the swampy moor is its redeeming feature. Threading along the course of the beck, we see a stream issuing from a crag-guarded ghyll, and on approach find that the stream fills it from bank to bank. A few stepping-stones allow one to reach a place where some advance can be made along the foot of the cliffs. Then ford the stream at the shallow, and climb the jutting crag to the right. You are now in an amphitheatre of rocks. In front is the waterfall, its spray damping you through; almost beneath is the chinklike passage through which the water escapes. On either hand tall crags rise, all dripping with spray and hung with luxuriant mosses. Here and there a fern—hart’s-tongue or similar slime-loving variety—finds root-hold; a huge fragment, torn down, maybe, by lightning, reclines precariously in a corner, ready, it seems, to fall and block up the pool. An active person can spring easily across the narrow gulf to the cliff over which the stream is pouring, and there find sufficient hold to climb out. But it allows of no mistakes. A fall into the well of the cascade is to be dreaded, as the unfortunate could only trust to the stream carrying him into the outflow passage; there is no handhold within reach by which a good position could be secured again. After this ghyll, not more than fifty yards in length, has been explored, the tour is finished, and it cannot fail to have been a most pleasing one.

VI. MOUNTAIN MOONLIGHT

Evening drew on apace as we walked out of Keswick by the Castlehead road. The ground, though not frozen, was firm and dry, and the faint breeze carried just a tinge of winter from northward. In the great hollow behind us lights began to twinkle here and there. Lake Bassenthwaite stretched like a sheet of blue steel between the steep slopes of Skiddaw and the brown coppices beneath Barf, while the cloudless western sky still glowed with the waning radiance of sunset.

On the hills lingered day; in the valleys night was nigh. At a corner in the long ascent we paused. A thin blue mist was gradually ascending, extending and joining into a canopy beneath which the lowlands were rapidly lost to view. Two wide fleecy clouds showed where the lakes lay. The vapour rising from the Derwent marked a streak across the level meadows between them; a thousand rills sent up their several lines to make a pall over the wide Newlands Vale, while a reek-like smoke rose from where Greta fretted over its deep rocky course beneath Latrigg. Ere we finally turned away, our eyes had wandered for some minutes over a continuous, slowly-moving sea of cloud, upon which the solid fells and precipitous crags seemed to be floating.

In half an hour we had crossed the ridge of Castlerigg. Through the leafless hedgerows bounding our track to the right a series of dark summits approached us closely. The last glare of day had left the sky, and above these rugged heights shone a few of the brighter lamps of heaven. A dull cloak of vapour occupied the hollowness in front, with the stumpy Naddle fell standing islandwise, for beyond it could be seen the night mists o’erhanging St. John’s Vale. To our left Blencathra was the most prominent mountain, its huge mass and sharp, broken contour showing to great advantage in the starlight, while along the eastern horizon stood the leviathan Helvellyn range, some five miles away.

A pale primrose light ran along their topmost ridge, flushing the sky so that for a space the sparkling stars could not be seen. The moon, we knew, was about to rise; indeed, we had chosen this night for a stroll because continuous light would illumine our way. It was grand walking along that hardened road, watching for rifts in the drifting mist above us, giving us brief glimpses of the brightening quarter of the sky. But we were within the shade of the mighty mountains before the moment arrived when the moon would appear over Crossfell, and flood with bright, uncertain light the upper world of mountains. But instead of this spectacle we watched, as we groped up the pony-track in the semi-darkness, the light touch the summits, and then the narrow ‘edges,’ or ridge-approaches, to Blencathra, making every boulder and cranny on the eastward side visible, accentuating the steepness and ruggedness by leaving the western slopes in utter darkness.

Perhaps five minutes’ walk below the crest of the pass we stopped to view the scene at leisure, and to regain our breath for the brief final ascent. To northward a great ridge of mountains, furrowed with dark ghylls and decked with great rock-faces and beds of scree; beyond, the uncertain glimmer of lakes caught through riven masses of mist; still further away (to westward), a sea of blue mountain-tops. To the right of these, broad moors and craggy fells, shadowy glens and sparkling tarns, with here and there a twinkling rivulet. But the finest scene of all was a crag deep beneath our feet, seemingly

‘with airy turrets crowned,
Buttress, and rampire’s circling bound,
And mighty keep and tower.’

With the level fleeces of mist kissing its lowest wall of slabs, it seemed a veritable castle suspended in mid-air, yet so real that we seemed to listen for the challenging blast of an Arthur’s horn to shake the echoes of the hills upon which the solid pile of gray would once again rouse itself to life and light. But even in this hour of moonlit witchery our senses would not play us false, and carry us back in spirit to the fabled days of old.

We turned in silence to resume our journey, yet it was not with cold we drew that sharp breath. For on the bright skyline above us horses and men were moving. Knights-errant? No, they were not clad in glistering mail from top to toe, nor carried they the bows and spears of the men of the Border raids. No, they were peaceful farmers of Legburthwaite, returning from a sheep-fair in another vale. We greeted them warmly—Nature at its loveliest, as we see it to-night, yet makes a man feel lonesome—and after a few words they passed on. But for long their occasional voices and the ringing of the horseshoes on the stony track were companionable sounds.

We did not quite ascend to the top of the pass, but just as the eastward prospect began to open turned southward for Helvellyn. There was no path, but the ground was fairly even. A flank of the great mountain cut off the view of dun, coppice-fringed Thirlmere; an outcrop beneath our feet hid the Vale of St. John. There was but little breeze on the uplands. The sound of a prowling fox or the bark of a wakeful dog at a sheep-farm in the gulf beneath again and again came to our ears as we strode along the grassy brae nearer to the highest peak.

‘Now for a short rush’: for thus years ago was I introduced to the wonderful view, and I like to re-feel when possible that glorious sensation. So up to the crest we came. As we stood there in the cold night air, it seemed to me that in a few yards we had climbed into another world. Our feet were upon a narrow beach of loose, clinking mountain limestone. To right and left the ground continued a few paces, then abruptly fell into depths unseen, and beyond, at a much lower elevation, the eye rested upon the jagged rocks of Striding Edge and Catchedecam. That long floating cloud is Ullswater. The confused masses are raising themselves somewhat, and the narrow waters of the lake in all their moonlit loveliness are partially to be seen.

Every one of the deep abysses radiating from the ridge on which we stand is occupied by a wandering patch of white vapour, but, as often happens, the moist places have by this time ceased their supply, and the clouds are gradually thinning and will shortly disappear. We felt as though from some insecure, lofty platform we stood regarding the creation of a world of giant rocks. Everything seemed so huge, so primitive, so awe-inspiring. A patch of thin night mist could hide every vestige of men’s handiwork; but up here works of God’s own fashioning stood supreme, overtowering the highest banks of vapour, and sheering in majestic silence their ambitious shoulders far up into the starlit sky.

For long we stood gazing—first north, to where the view ended on the plains of Cumberland; southward, over enormous piles of rocks, and over mist-brimming hollows where we knew lakes were hid; eastward, over a mass of mountains furrowed with deep valleys; westward, over low moors to a silvery range of heights.

My eye was perhaps most attracted to a long and nearly level series of ridges, along which I knew the Romans of old had built a road which still endures. More than once I had walked there by moonlight, and noted the giant front of Helvellyn, fenced with crags and strewn with scree, formidable-looking even so far away. But the chill air of night compelled us to move, and for an hour along the crest we walked, skirting cliffs which fell away abruptly to pastoral coves, and coming at last to where over the dark Grisedale Tarn we came opposite the long scree-strewn shoulder of Fairfield.

The only sheep we met as we walked along the ridge was most palpably a ‘stray.’ When the flock were driven down from the heights a month ago, this item managed to avoid both dogs and shepherd. Poor creature! it hailed us with a loud bleat; but though we had wished to give it help, we knew not whither to drive it. What happens to such during winter? The ravens and hawks and foxes squabble over their carcases at the foot of deep cliffs they have wandered over during time of storm, or in the narrow ghylls where their bodies lie after the drift in which they were smothered has melted away. Sometimes also the sheep’s wanderings are ended by a splinter of rock falling upon it as it threads the path beneath the precipices. A good many of the ‘strays’ are undeniably collected by the dread ‘night-shepherds’—sheep-stealers. Anyhow, very few are folded home or met again when with spring the flocks return to the uplands.

Now we turned westward, traversing a bog from which a streamlet flowed, and by the descending course of this we quickly returned to the dale. From Sticks Pass to the bog we had walked six continuous miles without coming so low down as 2,000 feet above sea-level. The whole journey was within the region of barrenness. The ground was strewed with stones of various sizes, between which bent-grass and occasional mosses—and in summer a few hardy saxifrages and other alpine flowerets—made a show of life. Once the hoot of a wandering owl came up from a ravine in Nethermost Cove. Everything winged had left the uplands on the approach of winter; the other migrants would come with the snow.