Chapter VIII: Front Matter (8)

While we were thus employed, the beagle was enjoying a very lively time on the coppiceside; twice I saw him scurrying in hot pursuit in a thin scrub of oaks. Our rabbit found, my companion again took up his gun and posted himself on a tiny rise in the path along the beckside, watching where Rough was working. It was, perhaps, three minutes before, with a rush, a rabbit broke cover from a tangle of grass right about our heads; veiled with bushes as the hillside was, the shot seemed almost an impossible one, but it was essayed. The dull sheen of a clouded sun dwelt upon the slender uplifted double tube of steel; the muscles of the lean face bending towards the stock of polished wood stiffened; his keen eye seemed to flash from trigger-lock to sight, and, passing through the thin air, lighted upon the little animal—gray, with white underparts showing as with strenuous haste it trod, perchance for the last time, the well remembered smoot among the tussocks. The glance seemed scarce to have reached the rabbit ere, with a sharp explosion, a tongue of flame spurted from the bright steel chamber. The dead gray stems of grass crushed and broke as the quivering body stumbled, checked, then rolled over and over down the slope. The next rabbit stole softly down the hedgeside when we had moved to the limit of the brae. Rough, ranging beyond the fence, was having our keenest attention as he hunted and whimpered round a dense clump of alders. I was standing some yards back, when I heard and located the stealthy rustle. My call, ‘Mark, this side the fence!’ brought the gun round promptly; but the rabbit cast all attempts at stealth to the wind, and scampered straight in our direction. In a moment it was so near the gun that a shot would have blown it to pieces. But when it came within a couple of yards, the furred one whisked sharply into a smoot through the hedge, and, without again showing itself, found harbour. Its escape was deserved for the sharpness of its manœuvre.

After this Rough’s chases began to take him further afield, and sometimes he ran quite out of our sight: we could hear his grand voice going away along the hidden fields. But his journeyings were fruitless. If the scents he was following were fresh, the rabbits merely ran a circle over the tussocky grass before taking to the depths of the warrens. Yet his courage never faltered, and he returned to search new brakes of bramble and hazel with never-failing patience. Sundry calls and whistles brought him within reach, and, as no other way of getting him away from the coppice offered success, the leash was put on, and away he trotted quietly by my side. But on the outskirts of the woods he was set at liberty again, and marked the period by immediately rousing a somnolent rabbit in the hedgerow across the brook. With glee he chased it up and down, but Bunny did not intend to seek the open. We could hear the crackling of dead twigs as it dashed about the dense tangle, and Rough’s quivering body showed us where approximately it was; but though up and down the hedge it ran, the sharpest eye could not sight it. Rough never despaired till the rabbit got into some burrow and scent failed. In answer to our call, he then left the hedgeside, and was trotting across the stony bed of the rivulet towards us when several wide-mouthed burrows attracted his attention. In a flash he was struggling into the dark depths, his voice coming back in strange muffled tones as he, scarce a yard within, came to passes so narrow that even his small white body could not advance. In and out, every time with more red soil adhering to his fine coat, right and left, he visited each hole in turn, settling down at last to scratch a way into the wider tunnel. His voice seemed to be constantly ringing the entreaty, ‘Why, why don’t you come out?’ but the rabbits, shivering in their furthest recesses, did not respond to the urgent cry.

Finding anything short of violence useless to remove the beagle, we ‘left him alone in his glory’ and returned to the farm.

‘I wish Rough would be coming,’ said my companion a few minutes later, after settling the routes for himself and the other gun for the rest of the day, and even as he spoke the beagle scrambled through the lower bars of the fold gate. Oh, where was the pretty coat of this morning! It was damp, and the sandy soil was smeared over every hair, while muzzle and paws were clotted with light red mud. But Rough’s work had been so good that nothing could be alleged for a few such minor indiscretions as this.

The leash was put on, and we left the farmyard. We struck in a different direction this time, following the course of the little stream. Here and there alders spring from the water’s edge, and beneath their shade rabbits are fairly sure to be found. My companion approached with caution, and, before I had time to get up, fired. I saw the rabbit roll over, but, acting on instructions, did not cross the stream to pick it up. Two score yards lower down, just where the beck ripples from its shady pools down a long shelving shale, a party of rabbits were feeding in fancied security. The gun was levelled, and, as the released Rough gave tongue in wilful glee, two short flashes and reports heralded two more successful shots. Not a miss yet to this gun. The long flats were unproductive of sport, but after a while we came to where the bluffs, standing some yards back from the water, were adorned with a sprinkling of gorse.

‘We’re sure to have some fun here,’ said my gun, ‘when Rough begins to rustle the whins.’

When my companion had taken up a position oil the brink of the rise commanding its whole breast, I let the beagle go. For a few minutes he ravaged fruitlessly about—‘not at home’ at every seat and smoot. Suddenly Rough, in a ranging rush, balked. There was something alive in a whin in front of it. One moment its eyes scanned the tangle, and located the rabbit more closely; next it turned its head, to assure itself that its master was in position; then, with head lowered, it rushed into the bush. Of course Bunny bolted instantly, laced in and out among the remaining bushes, then broke into the open. A few yards with Rough chasing pell-mell in the rear, then the fugitive seemed to curl up in its mad career, and the dog had gripped it in a moment. It was quite dead by the time I got up. As Rough seemed to be unwilling to work the whins further, we turned aside, crossing the stream and climbing the steep bank beyond.

We crossed the crest and took the lee of the hedge for some way, till a gap where another fence struck at right angles presented a chance for another shot. Turning to the left, we approached the best series of whins on the whole shooting. But here luck deserted us. Rough, hunting among the long storm-broken grass, roused a ‘sitter’ to flight, and pursued. He was a beagle: calls and whistles did not check him in full chase, and his quarry leapt up quite out of range. Rough’s alarming notes had their expected effect. When we came to the edge of the whins, we could hear him ‘towrowing’ at an unseen distance among the bushes, and there was not a rabbit to be seen. Nor did the partridge, of which for years a covey had inhabited a corner of the next field, appear. We called at several likely places on our return journey to the farm, but every animal was secure in its burrow, and Rough’s most agonized searches of hedge-bottoms and becksides was of no avail.

When the morning’s bag was reckoned up, we found that nineteen rabbits in all had fallen to our share—not bad for a farm where no kind of preserving is carried on, and for a district where poachers are not scarce.

III. A WINTER DAY’S SPORT

At sunrise on a summer morning the dewy grass shows where wild game has passed during the hours of darkness; but, though eloquent, these signs speak a language unknowable to the casual observer, and you rarely meet a man so talented as to be able to say with certainty what species have brushed these moist tracks, whose perception is keen enough to note the difference between the traces of rabbit and hare, and who can tell what winged occupant of the preserve alighted here and there. It is only after a thick fall of snow that Nature reveals itself by footprints to anyone who can enjoyably spend an hour or two in the frosty air.

Three inches of snow masked meadow, moor, and mountain, and showed through the acres of leafless coppice. The gamekeeper had prepared for a long tramp, and we proposed to accompany him part of his journey. Though well advanced in middle life, he could still outstride us juniors on the rougher ground, while abrupt ascent or descent, or progress through tangled heather or thicket, taxed him far less than us. As we had the run of the shooting, we took guns with us on even our shortest jaunts; for though game was not abundant (measured by so many head an acre), there was often a curious animal or bird to be got for preservation. In the lane the snow crunched pleasantly beneath our passing feet; but when we began to cross the meadows travelling became heavy, for clods of snow, three inches or so thick, adhered to our boots at every stride. The keeper alone stepped with ease, and we groaned to hear him say that he had taken the precaution to oil the soles of his boots at starting. Our progress was so slow now that we readily agreed to his pushing on, leaving us to follow at our leisure. We touched the first wall a little below its junction with the boundary of the woods. The smooth surface of the field was dotted with long lines of footprints. Rabbits and hares had, in the few hours which had elapsed since the cessation of the storm, been afoot, and here and there little cavities showed where wandering animals had nosed their way through to a few succulent plants available for food. The morning, which had been somewhat dark so far, brightened as the day approached; a stronger light seemed to be spreading along the valley-sides, and the mists which had dimmed the distant lowlands began to rise and recede seawards. At about seven o’clock full day had come, though the sun still tarried; a rosy light was visible even over the head of the great fellside on which we were. The scene was one in which wide snowfields and dense woodlands, shaggy coppices and huge naked rocks, made splendid contrasts; while the ice-covered pools in the valley beneath took on all the varying, ever-changing tints of the sky above.

My companion had eyes for other things than the exquisite beauty of our surroundings, and as I turned I noticed that he was intently looking at a trail which wound aimlessly in and out among the bushes fringing the main wood. The tracks were deep in the snow—obviously, the animal was of more than the usual weight of the woodland denizens; the prints were joined, as though the foot that made them was not lifted high, but, rather, shuffled from one contact to another. What was it? Last year, the keeper told us, there had been rumour through the countryside that some strange animal occupied the Craigside woods. This was the first sign we had had of the mysterious visitant. The footprints were deep, the marks were connected: a closer look showed that the spoor was that of a small plantigrade—the badger. Here and there in the open rides we came across labyrinths of footprints: the badger had wandered through one clearing, the tiny paws of the squirrel had pattered along the snow at another place—see where his tail had brushed aside a little ruffle of snow as he passed along. But most of our judgments as to what birds had been present were mere speculation; and in a short time even my enthusiastic friend took his eyes from the evidences of past presences to look through the groves and up the hillsides for those creatures of which glimpses were now and again to be had. Wild pheasants in their brave plumage called as they ran out of sight or flew up among the trees, a jay screamed as it winged away, and here and there a magpie chattered. Craigside Woods hold game, but much feathered vermin finds home there. It is impossible for the keeper to keep their numbers down without help. Think of an area three miles long and five miles wide—woods, moor, fell, and dale—in the charge of one man, and he hampered by having to rear a thousand pheasants per season. The smaller birds hop sadly from twig to twig, dislodging tiny puffs of snow every time they perch. They, poor things! suffer during this sort of weather severely, not only from want of food, but from the persecutions of buzzards and sparrow-hawks and others of the falcon kind. At other seasons the lesser birds are able, by reason of corresponding so closely in colour with their environment, to escape serious diminution, but now, when everything is backed by white, there is no such protection. Indirectly to-day the hawks’ keenness for harrying brings them little good, as both J—— and myself are able to get good shots and effective. Viewed closely, alive and dead, the sparrow-hawk is a neat bird; its gray-brown and white feathers harmonize quietly and well, and the poise of the body and wings, when alive, are pretty. Then, the speed at which they pounce down on a bird they have selected is worth watching. In the dense larch coppice we hear the cooing of many cushats, but they do not come in sight. In the very darkest dell a rowan-tree has established itself, and on its slender branches still hang a few clusters of what were in autumn bright golden berries, but which by this have lost their lustre. But the tree is alive with the forms of birds, which keep up a low cuttering the while they strip the fruit from the swaying stems.

Beyond the dark wood is a narrow belt of furze and cevins; and at our entering into this domain there is a tremendous rushing of wings as a covey of grouse takes the air just out of effective range. The moor-birds on the most exposed shootings regularly at the approach of the winter famine migrate temporarily to lower and more fruitful grounds. The next incident was the crossing, within a hundred yards of us, of a fox. It leapt out of the wood, and, dodging through the whins, was away for its distant borran [pile of stones] before we had time to move. But as it crossed the hollow in which we were standing we had a good view. At a steady gallop the redskin skimmed along, nor seemed barely to touch the frozen snow; at the edge of the ravine he hesitated a moment, then in two bounds was down the declivity, and nimbly balancing himself on a boulder in the bed of the ghyll. Here he hardly seemed to pause to gather his limbs beneath his body, but without sign of effort jumped well on to the steep bank opposite. As he regained the level of the moor, he resumed the swinging stride which mayhap had during the night carried him a dozen miles away.

The wan sunlight was now streaming over the great scaur on our right; on every foot of the many miles within sight frost spangles glittered; the river pools gleamed like polished silver. On the higher ground the wind had piled many drifts; every rock was plastered white; every bed of heather which had resisted the wind’s sweep was swamped in it. Yet from many a long spit of even grass the hindering mantle had been swept, and we walked with more ease than at any part of our journey. To break the death-like stillness of a frozen moor any sound is welcome—the croak of a raven, the bleating of a stray sheep, or the wild skirl of a heron or curlew. It was the first-named sound which attracted our attention. No such bird was visible; the sound seemed to come from over the hillock we were ascending. In a few seconds the bird of ill-omen was viewed by the beckside, busy at some carrion meal. ‘Quietly,’ whispered my companion. ‘I want a raven for my collection.’ The dusky one was so intent upon satisfying its appetite that we got well within range before it rose. We had both prepared to fire, though J—— was to have first shot. I kept my eye on the big bird slowly gaining its regular flight, speed, and rhythm; my friend hesitated—perhaps, as he afterwards said, he was in the midst of a shivering bout, and did not care to risk a miss. Probably it was in despair that he discharged one barrel at last in the direction of what was fast becoming a quickly-moving black dot on the white mountainside; but the result was startling. There was a sharp rustle of snow, a crisp crackle of heather branchlets, and a covey of fine grouse shot away, keeping low as they went. They, however, did not get off without paying toll, as both my ready barrels got home, and J—— ’s single chamber brought down a bird. Habit, I suppose, made me exchange the empty shells for full ones at panic speed (considering the numbness of my ungloved hands), but the habit was justified by results. The noise of the routed grouse started the whole stock of game in the dell: a stray rabbit scurried away towards the warren five hundred feet lower down—the choke barrel stopped it, just as I feared distance was going to bring immunity; a pair of snipe whirring up from a sphagnum morass got my other shot. The effect was somewhat curious, for both birds fluttered away at a slow, painful pace, evidently hard stricken. The cock-bird came to earth sixty yards away, but the other, after a period in which it seemed likely to fall, gradually regained its customary wing-power, and we saw it no more. A curlew shot wailing upwards, several plovers added their querulous cries, and long after we had passed from the glen the excited bird-calls rang through the clear air.

Meanwhile, scrambling on hands and knees up the stiffest parts, we had scaled a slack between two precipices, and by dint of hard work reached the summit of the mountain. This was not a very great height, yet commanded an extensive outlook. To northward lay a rolling moor, its white expanse broken here and there by gray, where the heather was only partly buried in the snow, by sharp-cut lines of occasional larch plantations, or by blurs of clustering cevins. Beyond, against the brilliant blue of the sunlit winter sky, stood a great disconnected sea of mountains, their pure white garb varied by irregular blue-black masses—great cliffs on which the snow could find no lodgment. Through the glasses, however, the cliffs were broken up by snow-floored gullies and rock-splits, and traversing ledges carrying fleecy loads, till it seemed as if a white lacework had been drawn across the bold steeps. One peak stood out from the sea of mountains, lording it over a series of minor but rugged hills. On both sides, deep below, were snow-bound valleys, and in the distance, dark and leaden, beyond the brightening power of the winter sun, the sea. On isolated shoulders of the moors one or two bright dots showed mountain tarns not yet frozen completely over, and like ribbons of silver the main streams wound down the valleys. On this upland the air was still, and hardly a sound came to our ears. At any other season the rivulets dashing and fretting down their rocky courses would have been easily heard, but now they were frozen. At any other season the numerous sheep grazing about the hills and slopes would have sent up occasional bleats; but these were now far away— driven to the valleys on the approach of winter. Gone, too, were the hawks and ravens and foxes, and the other wild creatures of the uplands, nearer to the haunts of men, where the means of subsistence were procurable.

Our glasses ranged over the wide area in view: little dots in far-off meadows enlarged into men and animals, the shepherd dragging the small hay-ration from the stackyard to his flock, the other servants doing the various offices of the farms. One house seemed to be the rendezvous for men and dogs slowly dragging across snow-covered fields. When a small crowd had collected, we watched it leave the farmyard and strike into the belt of larches, above which, somewhat scattered, it appeared, moving faster and apparently without any canine following. Instantly it came to me what was occurring—we were witnessing one of the ruthless informal fox-chases for which the district is famous. A fox had been plundering hen-roosts in its bloodthirsty fashion. A pack of canines—collies, hounds, bobtails, cross-breds, terriers, of all denominations and sizes, anything that could scent and run—had been collected, put on the red-hot trail, and were now streaming somewhere in front of those careering dots, pursuing the redskin, who, after a night’s blood orgie, was at a terrible disadvantage. But, though again and again we swept the bare hillside with our glasses, the scratch pack eluded our vision, and it was not till they had gone some two miles that we detected them. A number of restlessly moving dots was dashing about a big borran or moraine of stones in which, seemingly, the fox had taken refuge. They were almost opposite us, across the gulf of the dale, and in full sight. We watched the men come up at their best speed and examine the heap of stones. Apparently the chief entrance was on the side nearer us, as they clustered mainly in that direction. Man after man knelt down among the snow, and through the still air came faint echoes of their shouts encouraging the terriers presumably at work deep below. But now the men come away from Reynard’s fastness, and we watch anxiously to see him, worried by his enemies, make a bolt for life. But this he does not do, and a few minutes later a figure detaches itself from the group and moves swiftly along the ridge, disappearing from ken near the top of a sharp peak. His comrades stand idly about the borran, save one or two who return to the opening among the rocks to egg on the unseen terriers. It is quite a long time before the man we watched away returns with what appears to be a stick in his hand—a crowbar, by means of which the stones of the fox’s fortress will be prised asunder. Instantly the whole company is at work, two working the lever, the others throwing out the stones dislodged. Ten minutes’ frenzied labour sees a huge gap in the heap of stones; there is a sudden movement among the men; their dogs, which have been lying in odd hollows in the snow, cast themselves into the group; the air is rent with a wild yell. Then all is peace to us, but an oscillating, tearing patch of dog-flesh marks where Reynard’s carcase is being fought for. ‘Chopped at a borran’ is the fate of many a redskin wanderer of great and evil repute among the mountains.

We have stood so long watching the events of this fierce hunt that our limbs (unbeknown to our excited selves) have long been gripped by the frosty air; our attempts at walking bring excruciating pains, which gradually lose sting, however, as the stagnant blood is forced through the veins of leg and arm and shoulder.

We had completely banished our chill, and were walking along the hillside, gradually trending downwards, when I was surprised to note a little mountain tarn almost at our feet. So close enfolded was it in the swelling ridges that we had not suspected its existence. But pleasure was added to the scene by the fact that on a small patch of unfrozen water were several dark moving bodies—water-fowl of some sort inviting a stalk. We turned abruptly down the slope, going far to the right in order not to disturb our game. When beneath the level of the tarn, we turned into a dell, where rattled a meagre rivulet—the escaping surplus from the lakelet above. In the shelter of this watercourse we hoped to get within shooting distance, but after a hundred yards we had had enough of the scramble. The gully was floored with huge boulders, which, now sheeted with snow and ice, presented slippery faces in every direction, and every foot and handhold had to be carefully scraped. The problem which finally baffled us was to compass a pool occupying the whole width of the ravine, while from its brink the cliffs rose sheer, presenting not a vestige of hold. I tried a dozen methods to circumvent the cornice, but failed. It was quite anxious work descending the ice-sheathed rocks, but after some twenty minutes we were on the whitened hillside again, greatly chagrined that the ducks were to escape. I persisted that another approach to the tarnside more feasible than the river-bed might be found. It was in half-despair that we skirted the ridge bounding the tarn-basin, but in a minute or two my companion, whose high spirits had been somewhat dashed by our failure, jerked my arm. Carefully reconnoitring from the shelter of a summit, he had noticed a shallow furrow in the snow which promised an approach. It did not take more than five minutes for us to reach its depths, when we found that the hollow reached quite down to the water’s edge, and that our advance would in large measure be covered by boulders and dense bushes. We were within fifty yards of the water when all shelter was passed; in front lay an unwrinkled drift. I opined that, by crawling along to where a low wall had been erected for more luxurious and leisurely shooters, we would be able to get to the waterside. It was chilly work and tedious: care, above all, had to be taken of our guns, for a speck of snow in the barrel might mean a dangerous burst. Anyhow, half frozen to the elbow, we had almost worked to our desired haven before the sounds of duck came to our ears. The birds were feeding in the next bay to that we were so toilsomely approaching, and our present goal would be of little use to shoot from. Therefore we patiently skirted the snow-filled wall and got to the side of a little ridge dividing their bay from ours. J—— was in advance, and moved so incautiously that he had exposed his presence to the birds before I got near. I heard a sharp clan-call, a splashing and a rustling of wings, and the flock, I knew, were away. J—— fired twice, and, leaping forward—caution was useless now—I espied the birds in time to add a shot. However, only one bird fell, and it lay on the thin ice edging the water. To retrieve it was a task requiring great nicety of movement, and after many failures the ice immediately round the body was separated from the sounder surface, and floated to within reach of a rock not far from the side. This trophy secured, we were again afoot.

The day which broke so fair and bright was now becoming cloudy; the mists gradually crept into the distant mountains, and descended to one peak after another, till it became apparent that the ground on which we were standing would ere long be enveloped in shifting gray. This was the more disquieting because we had rambled far from the direction we had intended, and a lofty ridge stood between us and our home. It was imperative that we should pass this before the clouds fell so far, so up we climbed, making for where we thought the path to our valley lay. Long ere we reached the crest of the slope the dusky masses had fallen around us, and we walked in semi-darkness. At first we could still see some fifty yards through the creeping mist; then it closed down further, and everything beyond a radius of a score yards was blotted out. When, however, the breeze began to be filled with fine snowflakes, this tiny circle was narrowed till my comrade, two gun-lengths away, was little more than a darker shadow. We tramped upwards for forty minutes; then the slope changed direction—we had passed the ridge, evidently—and we turned to the left. Some half-hour later we judged that we should be in the proximity of our path and clear of the cliff, so we attempted very, very cautiously a descent. The slope was steep, and careful stepping was required to guard against slipping. We had perhaps ventured thirty yards, when the angle of descent became dangerous, and I called a halt. J—— asserted that our valley was right below, and we would soon get to less abrupt ground. I had my doubts as to the latter point, and emphatically refused to risk reaching home by way of a three-hundred-foot drop down the rocks. We argued the point; then J—— gave way. Further and further to our left we patrolled without much success, then rested a moment in the whirling snow. We were inordinately puzzled as to our whereabouts, for we had expected to find here a wide, easily-falling sweep of hillside instead of a rocky precipice.

‘Why, we must have been wandering in a circle!’

Yes, there, not ten yards below, the thickening mantle of snow had not yet completely blurred our footprints of half an hour agone. We were surprised indeed. Now carefully checking our progress at every few paces, we soon came to easier ground, and at last reached the mountain-path we were in search of. It was level with snow, and somewhat bad to follow, yet it served to shortly bring us below the clouds. A thin snowshower was passing up the valley, dimming the distance, but this was soon over and the sun shone out anew. But the clouds clung to the upper slopes of our mountain for the rest of the day.

Our bag weighed somewhat heavily ere we covered the three miles to our quarters, but we regretted this little. When we came below the clouds, the first living thing in sight was a raven, next a curlew, and then a flock of wild-swans swooping down to some unfrozen marsh. After this we cleared the snow carefully from our gunbarrels, and nothing more important than a blackbird was seen.

IV. ON THE FROZEN MERES

Day after day the cold increased. The lake-shore was fringed with ice; in the thin sere woods the trodden leaves crackled crisp underfoot. Then one morning the landscape was blotted out with a slow whirl of white, hastened by scarce a breath of wind. It was delightful to climb up to the moor as the white fleece piled up by inches. The larch-wood at a hundred yards was a dim meaningless shadow, yet we discovered unexpected beauties. During the night the snowfall ceased; the moon set as the day broke. A freezing breeze crept over the miles of snow, and, as it met tarn or beck, congealed their surfaces. On the broad lake the ice-sheet thus encouraged spread even at the height of noon, while after the sun set, and while the bright silent stars looked down, the frost realm extended apace.

Next morning the air was clear. Miles upon miles of white mountain-slopes extended along the horizon; woods and fields alike were buried in snow. Everything seemed pure against the steel blue of the ice-bound lake, or the lighter blue out there where the ducks disported in water as yet unapproached by Winter’s fetters. The ice, though in places sound, was still unsafe where the tiny mountain streams poured in. Yet, with caution, we skated on mile after mile, the sound of steel now ringing through the snow-floored woodland rides, now echoing away across the wide area of ice as we ventured further from shore. An island was now in front, crowned with dark spruces save on the north-west corner, where many centuries ago, some Norseman cleared a space for his habitation. The erection had gone long before the earliest histories were written, but the location was proved by the stray scraps of iron which the builder had used to bind the rough timbers together. As we swing along the smooth ice, always keeping outside the narrow snow-covered ribbon, we think of the Norseman’s iron nails, then of the bloomeries (small smelting furnaces) established by these shores centuries later under the supervision of the Abbot of Furness—in days when it was profitable to bring the iron ore to the woods, to be purified with charcoal. The industry seems not yet to be extinct, for as we glide round a rocky naze into a large bay, the faint breeze carries into our faces a pungent burden of wood-smoke. And there ahead are half a dozen eddying columns rising from as many pyres.

Charcoal-burning is still an active industry in several of our old-world countrysides. The coppices are allowed to grow for fifteen years, at the end of which, the chief stems being some four inches thick, they are felled. The woodcutters divide the trunks into short sections, which are peeled of their bark, and laid while still moderately green in cone-shaped piles, hollow to provide for a draught. When the cone is completed, it is thatched with turf, all air being excluded except from the centre, where the fire is kindled. When this has thoroughly got ‘hod,’ as the woodsmen say, the ventilating-shaft is closed.

The fire within now smoulders away, throwing off dense volumes of smoke through the interstices of the sods. Thus, the oven will go on for several days, during which period considerable vigilance is required. At times, fanned by the wind, the buried fire gains power, and, if not duly checked, is apt to burn through the coating of sods and send out a ruddy tongue of flame. This activity causes a chemical change, rendering the contents of the oven valueless as charcoal. To prevent these outbreaks, the charcoal-burner keeps on hand a number of damp sods, which he places as required upon overheated points. The other extreme, preventing sufficient ventilation, is quickly marked by a decreasing spiral of smoke, noting which the burner simply removes a turf or two from the covering of the pile till the fire has regained power and heat.

A call brings the charcoal-burner outside the rough hut of poles and brushwood from which he is watching his fires. In a few minutes our skates are off and we are climbing the steep to him. He says that since our last visit two of his ovens have died out; combustion has ceased, and a quantity of charcoal is fairly won. From this open-fronted hut—he has several, to protect him from changes of the wind—he can see every fire. ‘I’m frightened that one there is going to get into a low [flicker of flame],’ he says as, sod in hand, he goes to the cone in question. The man speaks in a grand native dialect, without pride or apology in his words—a burly man in middle life, tanned and weather-beaten, roughly but warmly dressed and shod. In his face is the good humour of a heart where reigns perennial spring; his voice is full and resonant; his eye beams with health and the contentment of outdoor life.

He is loath to speak of the romance of his own life. ‘Nay, nay,’ he will reiterate, ‘there’s naught new in the woods. Year after year goes, and not an alteration, save that coppices spring and are felled, and men grow older.’ But he can be more easily drawn to speak of Lanty Slee, the last known illicit distiller among the mountains, and how he oft escaped capture; of the many ‘mains’ of cock-fighting still to be seen from the retirement of a charcoal-burner’s hut. The Hermit of the Woods forty years ago was a friend of John’s, and he still treasures an oak staff which that curious character presented him. A broad spiral of black, perhaps ‘done with smoke,’ as Friend John thinks, decorates it, proving that the Hermit was not without knowledge of some secret crafts.

The charcoal-burner is a keen naturalist in his way. It was John who for a number of years held to the statement that the badger frequented our lonelier woods. His observation is now conclusively proved, and to-day he shows us a dell where a plantigrade has been recently afoot. ‘I heard a wild swan, whooping, this morning,’ he adds with marked satisfaction. ‘There’s a stiffish frost astir when they come so low.’ But the charcoal-burner’s craft he will say little of, and what wonder, if he cannot raise enthusiasm on it? For hours during the recent snowfall he was patrolling round his fires, checking this and encouraging that to greater heat. Even now, in his airy tepee of brush, he is at the same moment chilled with the frosty air and warmed with, the fierce heat of the fire whereon a battered black kettle is beginning to boil preparatory to the noonday meal.

During summer, he states, the life is grand. For weeks on end John camps in the woods, a free gipsy. A flitch of bacon, a bag of flour, are provision for a month. If the woodsman needs variety, there are plenty of trout to be caught with a night-line in the nearby streams. It is in late autumn and early winter that the charcoal-burner is most busy. His wreaths of smoke climb upward from the bare spaces once occupied by flourishing woodlands. The march of the seasons in the woods and by the lake is closely noted by John, whose naturalist ear notes which birds trill and which are silent, whose eye sees the coming and going of the migrants. The pipits and the thrushes leave the moors and the bushes, the wagtails the watersides, and in their places, from the far north-east, come the snow-bunting and the fieldfare and various species of duck.

John is now ready to patrol his circle of fires. By the side of the first, however, we pause a moment, for it is laid on the flat crest of a sharp rock-spur. To right and left the slopes are bleak and dismal; the mask of snow cannot hide the scar of the woodcutter, the stumps of sapling oak and hazel and ash. At our feet the lake extends, a long narrow sheet, its head far away in the lap of the snowy mountains. Three more of the charcoal-ovens are on this level. John strides on ahead through the clinging snow, and is attending to the second fire by the time we reach it. Between this and the third we cross a small brook just below a waterfall. John says that the scene from this point was a favourite with the Hermit of the Woods, who on more than one occasion painted it. But we are perhaps more interested in the doings of a tiny dipper which, alarmed at our presence, flirts hither and thither about the pool beneath the fosse. One moment it dives, to reappear right among the frothing, tumbling waters. Next it dances, about a snow-covered stone almost level with the pool, finally, with an impatient trill, it wings its way upstream to where strangers do not pry.

John, like other wood and dale dwellers, cannot understand the greatness of that philosopher (John Ruskin) who for so many years was his neighbour. The musings and wanderings of that master mind were beyond him; yet, if the mind was incomprehensible, I think the man was frequently understood. John tells one story which cannot be too often repeated. One hard winter a labourer, having to provide for a large family, went to the Master of Brantwood to seek some little job till the frost broke. The Professor received the man kindly, and, after giving him a meal, took him to a little flat just above the level of the lake. ‘Dig here,’ he said. The man got tools and commenced work, and for several days he kept on digging. When the hole got too deep for him to throw the soil and stones out, he got a ladder and a bucket, and so kept on, bringing up the loose stuff in driblets. At last, when he had got down some thirty feet, he reached bedrock. He then went up to Brantwood, and reported the circumstance to the Professor, who returned with him to the lake-shore. The great man looked into the dark hole a moment, then turned to the labourer, and said: ‘Very good; fill it up again.’ John, the charcoal-burner, can think of no reason for the Professor’s strange fancy, but he applauds the action, for it kept the poor labourer at work during a long spell of frost, and prevented the poignant misery which ‘out of work’ entails on such a man’s family.

As John concluded his simple story we came to the last of the ovens, and here we parted, the charcoal-burner to return to his vigil-hut on the rocky spur, we to resume our skates for the five miles’ homeward journey.

A year later I was in the neighbourhood of a large and somewhat inaccessible mountain tarn. A spell of dry frost had set in, and as yet no snow had fallen. On the first evening of my sojourn I left my lodgings about six o’clock; it was quite dark in the hollow, and where the trees thronged I had difficulty in keeping on the open road. In ten minutes I had emerged from the lower ground, and was striding along a moorland road, crossing a tongue of high ground which divided upper and lower valleys. The stars shone bright above, the regiment of massive fells bounding the dale was capped with frost-rime almost as pure as snow; here and there, contrast to the swelling, soaring contours, were tumbled rocky bields; a hundred yards beneath my path, at the foot of a steep slope covered with tangled frozen bracken, rattled the stream in its bouldery course. The great gulf of the dale ahead was filled with a gray gloom, which the tiny lamps of heaven could not dispel. My path gradually descended to the level of the stream, fording here and there courses from which the torrents had ebbed. A crash and a tinkle of shivering ice told me when I met these skeletons of former greatness. I had got three miles up the dale, and had banished by exercise the cold from my limbs before I came to my objective. A single stone arch spanned a rock-chasm at the bottom of which a deep pool churned and gurgled. So deep was the dusk reigning here that only when an upspringing jet caught the vagrant starlight could I accurately determine the depth. Here and there, in the recesses of the rocks, the spray had formed huge icicles; one was shaped, as it seemed to me, like the fantastic wraith of an enormous man. From this bridge I had intended to return but ultimately decided, as there was plenty of time, to go forward some little way. I walked sharply—the freezing air permitted no loitering—and, between a couple of big boulders, rounded the corner, and in a few minutes was out in a level hollow.

The scene in front was quite the wildest I have met with: save the stream gurgling over a bed of shingles, there was scarce a sound to be heard. The folded flocks were silent, the ‘low, continuous murmurings’ of the fellside torrents were hushed, the very air was held in a frosty stillness. But the sky—here at last was a clear view to where the primrose of the aurora gleamed and faded and gleamed anew. The whitened mountain-peaks seemed rimmed with a wandering, golden irradiance for a moment; then the hues died away, leaving a chilling aspect before my eyes. Eastward, lo! along the hill-tops ran a line of fire, and the sky above was glowing. Moonrise! Now backward to quarters as smartly as foot can spurn the iron road.

Next morning, skates in hand, we took the direction of the mountain tarn. For nearly two miles our way held up a side-valley, in which were two or three sheep-farms. Here the shepherds were at work carrying huge bundles of hay to their flocks. Now we reached the open moor. The frost-rime lay thick on every blade of grass, and as we climbed higher the air seemed to turn colder. The path was so littered with loose stones that we shortly abandoned it, and struck up the steep slope more directly. In half an hour we stood upon a shelf in the mountainside which commanded a full view of the glen, and of miles of gray-white mountains around it. The worst of the ascent over, we struck across the frozen bogs, and very shortly stood by the mountain tarn. Seen from the beach near its outflow, it was a splendid sheet of ice, without a crack or a flaw anywhere. Its bluish surface seemed to extend a great distance into the lap of some great rocky bluffs. In a few seconds our skates were fixed on; our hands, unspoiled by the false luxury of gloves, were not numbed and nerveless. Despite the cold air circulating about us, we were distinctly warm with the exertions of our brisk climb. How the echoes resounded the ringing sound of steel meeting ice! A buzzard hawk, perched on the tip of a crag five hundred feet above us, took fright and threw itself into the air. For awhile it seemed as though other bird-life was absent. We coasted along cautiously a hundred yards to prove the soundness of the ice; then, as our confidence rose, extended our journeyings, though still keeping on the lower section of the tarn. The only island on this water is a small outcropping patch of rock, without a bush, but the inland home and breeding-place of a family of gulls. We skated out to this and passed around it. So far we had not seen the trace of a skate-track; we were the pioneers here, and, if I knew the dalesmen aright, no other skaters were likely to enjoy this delight.

Fully satisfied as to our security, we now set out to skate right round the sheet of ice, my friend leading. Now and again we passed over areas of Jack Frost’s most delicate tracery in hoar: thin white lines joining the most elaborate little ‘knobs’ of frost-rime, which, examined closely, bore close relation to the beautiful structure of a flower. There was a subdued croaking going on in front; the still air carried sound so well that we skated with the utmost care forward. Both of us hoped to see a raven and were not disappointed. As we swept into a shallow rock-fringed bay the bird rose with rapid wing from his feast of frozen mutton. A dead sheep lay within ten yards of the shore, gnawed and torn by a dozen tribes of mountain-dwellers. Occasionally from a spot like this a winter wanderer may scare a fox, but generally Reynard eats his fill during the hours of darkness and in some snug corner of the rocky hillside above is sleeping. Our run up the shore of the mere was fairly rapid, but I did not expect our view to have changed so completely. We were now in the upper part of the tarn; two jutting crags approached and narrowed its centre. The hillsides were strewn with great blocks of stone, tributes from the huge cliffs overhanging them. A deep narrow glen ran up some way from the head of the tarn, then suddenly ceased as a mountain-front arose. Feeding in the burn were birds—a gaunt heron the chief. The little knot of wild-duck did not take alarm till we had run close enough to admire their gorgeous sheeny plumage and soft contours. At the opening of one bay I halted a few seconds and looked through the clear ice beneath me. An unseen current was moving a tangle of yellow water-weeds and, almost touching them was a large pike. A sharp tap on the ice with my skate sent him sheering out into the deep waters. In shallow dubs I have frequently seen the same thing, but not on large tarns; For some time we had been striking in the direction of a high front of rock which rose sheer from the water. Its front, seared with a vein of brilliant white felspar, had been a landmark to us. Isn’t it curious to stand on a sheet of thin ice and look down into the inky depths? There we could see, for twenty feet, ledge after ledge and slab below slab, but not the foundation of the rock itself. The ice all round had been in splendid condition, and now we simply flew along beneath the frowning scaurs towards the beach we started from.

Arriving here, skates were doffed and we made down the rugged path again to the dale. Our experience had been an enviable one: there had not been a single drawback. The travelling was rugged enough to keep us warm, the skating glorious. When shall we have such another time?

AMONG UNDERGROUND SCENERY

The whole district of Craven, in North-western Yorkshire, is honeycombed with innumerable earth-chambers. Ribblesdale, Wenningdale, Wharfedale, and half a score of other dales named after their respective rivulets, are undermined and tunnelled for miles by the hand of Nature, and beneath their surfaces flow ‘sunless streams,’ no one knows whither, and measureless to man. Often, in wandering over the mountains there, we hear voices and gurglings from torrents which never find their way at all to the upper world, and from out one cavernous mouth in the hill Whernside flows a stream which in flood-time washes out periodically old silver coins of the reign of Edward I., from some long-lost treasury.

Near Giggleswick Scar is an ebbing and flowing well of exceedingly irregular habits. If you lay your ear to the ground at a certain spot in Ribblesdale, you will hear how the water comes down at Lodore in fairyland, although not so much as a rivulet is to be seen outside of Robin Hood’s Mill. Sometimes tremendous funnels, 200 feet in depth, lead by a very direct route, and one which would take no time at all to traverse, right down upon these mysterious streams. Black and deep enough the water seems, as we peer over the edges of the ‘pot’ at it, nor does it make one at all ambitious for subterranean exploration. Hellen Pot, which contains in it an underground waterfall of no less than 40 feet, has been descended to the depth of 330 feet, where the black river revolves in a quiet pool, and does not reappear to mortal eye for more than a mile. Some few of these ‘pots’ have fish in them; large black trout abound in Hurtle Pot, where the boggart, in rainy weather, is heard to threaten and fret, and are also found in less quantity in the chasm above it, though the upward force of the water is there so strong as to cast up stones of considerable size to the surface, and even on to the bank.

These are some of the wonders within reach of Ingleton: Yordas Cave is perhaps the most wonderful of all. If you are awheel, you turn westward from the village to Thornton-in-Lonsdale. At the church here—note the ancient stocks still standing at the crossways for the punishment of malefactors—your road turns northward up a formidable hill. As seen from the summit of this, Kingsdale presents a wild, and to some folks a dreary, appearance. On the occasion of my visit mist-clouds hung low, and even the lower hills about the valley could scarce be seen. The lower part of the descent is easily rideable, and ere long you are pedalling along a fair moorland road. Around you belts of limestone at regular intervals seam the hillside, while closer are the dry brown stones of a river-bed. This is but one of Ingletonia’s many freaks; a mile back were anglers plying their craft. After a wet period this river-bed flows with a torrent, but in a few hours the overplus has dwindled away. The becks on all the surrounding hillsides disappear down rock-chines as they near the dale, to rise to the surface again, perhaps, a couple of miles away.