Chapter III: Part 3

A lady who had been pained to see a golden eagle “for sale,” once asked me whether, in the event of her ransoming the captive, it would be possible to set him at liberty on some mountain height, and for a time I was rather dazzled by the idea of releasing the imperial bird from the top of Snowdon or Scafell, or, if the companionship of other eagles was desired, from some far northern peak; but on my consulting a well-known ornithologist he assured me that the eagle, cramped by long imprisonment, would probably be unable to fly, and that if he did fly he would almost certainly fall a victim to some local “sportsman,” or be pecked to death by his wild congeners, if there were any in the neighbourhood; so in the face of these discouraging predictions the project was given up.

Eagles, then, we have none in our Welsh and English mountains, and the kite having now been reduced to so poor a remnant as to be numbered with the lost British birds, we turn perforce to the buzzard and the peregrine as the two most noteworthy representatives of the family of the Falcons. The fiery-hearted peregrine, or “falcon-hawk,” as the dalesmen call him, still breeds on certain rocky ramparts, whence he can overlook the valleys and dart forth unerringly on any passing prey. An eye-witness once described to me how a falcon, having struck down one of two pigeons in a field at the head of Langdale, and being scared from his victim by some harvesters who saw the chase, rose instantly and was off at lightning speed after the other pigeon over the ridge of Bowfell!

We look in vain to the buzzard for such indomitable energies; yet it is a grand sight to watch him sailing aloft in leisurely circles, or hanging poised, as he sometimes does, off the edge of some broken escarpment, so near that you can see his barred feathers and quickly glancing eye. On a misty day in rounding a sharp headland, I have sometimes come suddenly upon a perched buzzard at only a few yards’ distance, and have seen him flutter up in a panic, to lose himself in the clouds; in the nesting season the bird will occasionally “shadow” an intruding climber almost as the curlew does, and follow him at close distance along the ridge of the mountain until he has conducted him off his estate. I have frequently seen buzzards and ravens sparring at each other in the sky, in that desultory and ineffective manner of warfare which many birds seem to adopt.

The raven, who, in default of the eagle, divides with the buzzard the empire of the crags is, perhaps, the most interesting bird that now claims our attention; and robber though he is, we are always glad to hear his deep “_kronk_,” or his wild dog-like bark, before the black form is seen skirting the edge of the precipice or winging straight across the glen. It is somewhat strange that in spite of the persecution of shepherds, the cupidity of collectors, and the inroads of rock-climbers, so large a bird can still find undisturbed breeding-places, and maintain his numbers as well as he does among our British hills; but I think the case of the raven, as far as these districts are concerned, is hardly so desperate as ornithologists give us to understand. To walk for several hours among the Carnarvonshire or the Cumberland mountains without evidence of ravens, is in my experience rather unusual, and at times one may see them there in great strength; a few years ago, for example, I watched nine birds one August afternoon soaring and skimming with playful antics along the edge of Grasmoor, and so intent on their game that they allowed me to come within quite close range; on another occasion I saw more than a score of them rise together from the side of Skiddaw, doubtless from a carrion feast.

It is astonishing how near this wary outlaw will approach to dwelling-houses in the early summer mornings before mankind is on the stir. It so happened that from the cottage at Capel Curig where I used to stay, I could see a section of the hillside above as I lay in bed, and on two successive mornings I was puzzled by what seemed to be a concourse of large fowls hopping and squabbling, a few hundred yards from my window, round some object on the bank. On further investigation I found this object to be the carcase of a sheep, and the combatants to be hungry ravens “on the grab.”

But there are other and more cheery singers in the mountain choir. In the early summer, when the bird-life of these upland valleys is at its prime, two voices above all others are resonant along the Welsh hillsides, those of the cuckoo and the curlew, who fill the clear air with their clear melody the whole of the long June day, and not a little of the night. There are, perhaps, few sounds in wild nature more fascinating than the curlew’s call, starting, as it does, with its strange single note, and gradually rising and breaking into what seems like rings and bubbles of exquisitely liquid song, which fall here and there on the grey moorland while the singer is often unseen. As for the cuckoo, that _improbus anser_ of the hills, there are seasons when he seems to be ubiquitous; you pass him shouting in the valley as you start out; you meet him again and again about the middle region of heathery boulders and grass slopes; and when you emerge on the sky-line and think you have left him far below, his voice comes after you, as jubilant as ever, and pursues you to the very cairn on the top.

Familiar friends, also, are the ring-ousel, or, as some call him, the rock-ousel, and the wheatear; the one as fussy and loquacious as his lowland cousin, the blackbird (thanks to his outcry, I have sometimes found his nest on a ledge of steep heather-covered rock, as under the northern front of Tryfan); the other flitting silent and watchful, with quick jerky movements, from stone to stone, or along the grey wall on the mountain. These with the ever-welcome meadow-pipit, are rarely absent from the hillside. Of the river birds there is none that has so strong a hold on the affections of the mountaineer as the water-ousel, delightful little sprite of the tumbling becks and eddies, from which his very being seems inseparable. No writer with whom I am acquainted has paid a juster tribute to the many charms of the water-ousel than the author of _The Mountains of California_, whose chapter on the American variety of the bird (_Cinclus Mexicanus_) recalls many of the traits of our English “dipper” as we have known him, none too plentifully, beside his native streams and pools. The grey wagtail and the sandpiper will be found in similar haunts.

The beasts of the mountain, as viewed by the passing observer are, with one exception, less interesting, because less wild, than the birds; for the fox and the “mart” are seldom seen by the climber, who, in his eagerness to reach his goal, has no time to devote, as the naturalist would, to a patient watching of their haunts. The exception is the wild goat, which, strange to say, is not known as a British species by the majority of naturalists, though it has much more right to that distinction than the “wild” Chillingham cattle; for it is a fact that on some of the Welsh mountains as on some Scottish islands, there are still herds of goats which, if not indigenous (that claim, it seems, is disproved by their mixed colours and the shape of their horns), are yet living in a state of absolute freedom and wildness, full of courage and resource, and able to hold their own under hardships of climate which no domestic animal could endure, and there is little doubt that these herds, though descended from escaped animals, and reinforced from time to time by “strays” that have taken to the hills, are of very great antiquity. They used to be common, a century or less ago, in a number of craggy spots, such as the Pass of Aberglaslyn, from which they have now been driven; but a remnant may still be seen on the Rhinog Fawr, and a few other lonely ranges, by those who approach them with due care.[18] It was lately stated in a London paper that “wild goat stalking among the Hebrides can fairly stand comparison with ibex shooting”; and I can remember, some forty-five years ago, hearing some talk at Pen-y-Gwryd about an expedition to Snowdon to shoot goats. There are as few goats as eagles on Snowdon now; but I can testify that the sport is an excellent one when the field-glass is substituted for the rifle, for in this way I have stalked some fine goats on the Rhinog and elsewhere, and have rejoiced to see them go bounding across the cliffs in style that would do credit to the Swiss chamois or the white goat of the Rockies. I was told that there was a similar herd on the Yewdale Fells, near Coniston; but the only wild goat that I have seen in the Lake District was a solitary one whom I surprised, in a steep and secluded hollow, on the rocky side of Glaramara.

These wild Welsh goats must not be confused with the half-domesticated herds which it was the custom until about fifty years ago to keep on the hills as sheep are now kept. We are told by Cliffe in his _Book of North Wales_ (1851) that “but few of the national animal, the goat, are now kept, in consequence of the injury which they have done to the young plantations”; and the same writer gives a vivid account of a goat-hunt--apparently of the wild animal--which he witnessed on the Rhinog.

While ascending we heard much shouting, and barking of dogs,
intermingled with piercing shrieks. Then we passed a gigantic
snow-white billy-goat, with his legs tied, struggling at
intervals convulsively, and uttering very shrill cries.
Presently we came in sight of several men in a narrower part
of the Pass, striving to capture another white billy-goat
of greater size and even longer horns. The animal had taken
refuge, after a long chase, on a very narrow ledge in a
precipice, and apparently bid defiance to his pursuers. At last
he bounded suddenly from a great height, and ran rapidly over
broken rocks and heath for about six hundred yards, with the
pack of dogs close at his heels, who ultimately brought him up,
but were kept at bay by his horns.

From the mountain goats we pass naturally to the mountain sheep, who, though nominally domesticated, are so little subject to human interference and live so great a portion of their lives at large upon the hills, that as compared with our dull southern breeds they may almost be regarded as wild animals. Very familiar to every one who has spent much time on the mountains is the sharp “sneeze” of the sheep as he gives warning to his fellows that a stranger is approaching. Writing of the Welsh sheep, half a century ago, Cliffe tells us that they differed entirely in their habits from those of an enclosed country. “Roaming wherever inclination leads them, confined by few or no fences, they are obliged for mutual defence against foxes, ravens, and other birds of prey, to form parties of ten or twelve, of which number, if one perceives anything advancing towards the little flock, he turns and faces the object, when, if its appearance be hostile, he warns his companions by a shrill whistling noise, and the whole scamper off to the more inaccessible wilds.”

Since this was written, the extent of many pasture-lands has been lessened; but there are still places where the sheep have a whole mountain, or several mountains, to roam over, and live in a state of considerable freedom and liveliness. An old man who used to spend the summer months at the top of a high pass in the Lake District, where he sold refreshments to tourists, and slept in a little hut built right into the steep hillside, told me that his only discomfort arose from the noisy gambols of the sheep, who kept him awake by disporting themselves on his grassy roof after nightfall. Thus, like the lady in _Locksley Hall_, he must lie and ponder--

In the dead unhappy night, and when the _ram_ is on the roof.

Imagine any one suffering in this manner from the frolics of our south-country _muttons_!

The mountain lambs, especially, have a rare sprightliness and beauty, and there is scarcely a more lovely picture to be seen among the hills than one of these superb little creatures poised intrepid on a high rock or wall as the traveller passes below, and looking down on him with an innocent and wistful curiosity. Such a sight makes it pitiful to remember to what base uses man has turned the sheep, and how degraded is the domestic breed, as we commonly see it, from the glorious wild animals described in the _Mountains of California_. “The domestic sheep,” says Muir, “is expressionless, like a dull bundle of something only half alive, while the wild is as elegant and graceful as a deer, every movement manifesting admirable strength and character. The tame is timid; the wild is bold. The tame is always more or less ruffled and dirty; while the wild is as smooth and clean as flowers of his mountain pastures.”

The sheep of the Welsh hills and the Cumbrian fells is a sort of connecting-link between Muir’s _ovis montana_ and the silly creature of our meadows; but it must be admitted that he sadly lacks the marvellous climbing powers of his wilder relative, for when he ventures on the tempting ledges of turf that intersect the sheer precipices he sometimes shares the fate of the “meek mountain lamb” in Scott’s “Helvellyn.”

I once saw an unfortunate “cragbound” sheep on a narrow and very dangerous terrace that overhangs the great eastern verge of Tryfan, where, having eaten all the grass on the ledge, she was peering nervously about, trying to summon up the courage to make a backward leap to safety. After descending from the mountain, I called at the farm below, and got a promise that the sheep should somehow be saved from its plight; but on the following day I found the same tragedy proceeding. Again I sought and received assurances from the shepherds that they would go with ropes to the rescue, but as I had to leave Wales the next morning I never learnt the sequel, which I fear may have yielded more satisfaction to the ravens than to the sheep.

If the mountain sheep must be deemed half wild, can less be said of that lean, gaunt, hungry, savage, but highly intelligent animal, the sheep-dog of Cumberland or Wales? It is one thing to see these “friends of man” in their educated capacity, collecting or dispersing the sheep under their owner’s vociferous bidding; it is quite another thing to see them gorging ravenously on a carrion sheep, and slinking off with wolfish demeanour when disturbed. Historians may tell us that “the last wolf” was killed among these mountains some centuries back; but we make bold to doubt that assertion when surrounded by half a dozen bristling “Gelerts” in the wilds of Wales, for it would then seem that not a little of the character of _canis lupus_ has survived in domestication. For my part, I would rather meet a Welsh bull on an open grass-slope than a pack of these snarling sheep-dogs when their master is out of call, for I can bear witness that at such a moment Mr. Jack London’s choicest wolf-stories are brought too forcibly to mind, and that “the call of the wild” has an unpleasant reality of its own. The traveller who has been followed halfway up Carnedd Llewelyn by a troop of these “white-fangs,” in an interval of their duties at the sheep-washing in Llyn Llugwy, will be able to form at least an “intelligent anticipation” of how it feels to be pursued by real wolves in the forests of the north-west. The mountain sheep-dog is still half a wolf, and not without reason has Mr. Thompson Seton made sheep-dogs the heroes of two of the chapters of his _Wild Animals I have Known_.

I have incidentally mentioned the bull; and who that has walked much in Carnarvonshire or Merioneth will be so pedantic as to deny the bull his place among the _fauna_ of these districts? Theoretically, no doubt, he must be classed with the domestic; but in practice there are times when his domesticity is apt to be doubted by the wayfarer, and when even the cheery assurances of the Welsh herdsman (if within hail) that “she will do nothing to you,” leave much to be desired. Turned out in early summer on the roadways and hill-slopes, with that national disregard for Saxon weaknesses which has characterized the Cymry from of old, the black bulls of these hilly regions are an element that has to be taken into account, together with winds and waters, in the traveller’s plan of campaign. I have known a party of tourists compelled to elect between meeting the angry animal or relinquishing the direct ascent--a choice between bull and “bwlch”--and unanimously agreed in favour of a rearward move. I once camped with a friend for a fortnight in an artist’s van, pitched on an open plot in an upland valley where a big bull was pastured; and when we heard him in the darkness playfully scratching back or sharpening horns on our door-step, we bethought us of those weird stories of wild life in the backwoods, where the dwellers in the lonely log-hut hear the long-drawn sniff of the strolling bear, as he “samples” them under their bolted door at night.

In some of the valleys round Snowdon there is a strange-looking breed of black and white Scandinavian cattle, whose appearance at close quarters on a dark night is rather eerie, because only the white part of each animal is easily visible, and the traveller has the spectacle of a detached head, or shoulder, or hind-quarter, as the case may be, confronting him through the gloom.

As a rule, it is only in spells of great heat, such as occasionally descend upon the mountains, that the bulls are really dangerous, and then they are seldom approached, even by the herdsman, without the aid of dogs. It is said that the most ominous symptom on the bull’s part is when, instead of the usual shrill bellow, he gives vent to a low querulous grumbling sound, which seems to imply a deeply felt long-cherished grievance; at such times it is wise to give him a wide berth. After all, can we men complain, if the bull sometimes shows himself dissatisfied with our treatment of his fellows? Who knows but that his splenetic outbursts have some reference to the massacre of his kith and kin at the hands of the “family butcher,” or to the savage dietetic habits of the very people who denounce _him_ as “the savage brute”? What I have thought a little hard, however, is that no discrimination is made by the bull between beef-eater and vegetarian, and that the peaceful pilgrim who has not tasted sirloin for over forty years is compelled to skulk up the hill under cover of a stone wall as guiltily as the shameless intruder who has a beef-sandwich in his pocket. Some vegetarians, I believe, advocate the wearing of a badge; there would be more to be said in favour of the distinction, if the black bulls of Snowdonia would consent to recognize such flag of truce.

We see, then, that the Cambrian and Cumbrian hills, though far less richly populated than they were some centuries back, have yet no little interest to offer us in the races of non-human peoples, wild or half-wild, that inhabit them--races whose life is much more closely intertwined with the life of the mountain itself, and more responsive to its varying moods and seasons, than that of the shepherd born and bred on its slopes, not to speak of the summer visitor who comes there for mere pastime or recreation.

VI

The Barren Hillside

We talk of the barrenness of the mountains, and barren in a sense they are, when contrasted with the teeming wealth of the plain, yet the bleakest of them, if studied with sympathy and insight, will be found to have a living and life-giving freshness of its own. Now and then, perhaps, when face to face with some scene of more than common severity, we are tempted to exclaim, with Scott:

The wildest glen, but this, can show
Some touch of nature’s genial glow:
On high Benmore green mosses grow,
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencoe,
And copse on Cruchan-Ben;
But here, above, around, below,
On mountain or in glen,
Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower,
Nor aught of vegetative power,
The weary eye may ken.

But austereness, too, has its place, and often is to the mountains what fertility is to the fields, not a blemish, but a glory; and if grey crag[19] and wild hillside bear no visible fruitage, yet many are the spiritual crops which may be gathered from them by the understanding eye and mind.

Some centuries ago the Lake District, as Wordsworth has remarked, “must have been covered with wood to a great height up the mountains, where native Scotch firs must have grown in great profusion, as they do in the northern part of Scotland to this day”; and he quotes a traditional saying that a squirrel might have travelled from Wythburn to Keswick without touching earth. In Wales the same conditions once existed, and Pennant, in 1773, referred to the earlier destruction of the oak forests which had clothed the upper dales. “Avarice,” he wrote, “or dissipation, and its constant follower, poverty, have despoiled much of our Principality of its leafy beauties.” We can no longer say of Snowdon or of Helvellyn, as of Mont Blanc, that “around his waist are forests braced”--even miniature forests--but a closer knowledge will teach us that the hillside, even when barren of vegetation, is never barren of charm, and it may be that these mountains have gained as much as they have lost by the change. Certainly there is a keen pleasure to the climber in standing free of all entanglement of trunk or thicket on the bare and open fells.

Not that the mountain is often a mere treeless and shrubless waste, for in some places, on the lower slopes, there is a thick ground-growth--carefully shunned by the traveller, but rich and beautiful in itself--of heather, bracken, and bilberry, and there are not a few spots where the flanks of the hills are a very wilderness of intermingled crags and brushwood, ancient lurking-place of “mart” or fox, but rarely if ever trodden by foot of man. When these fail, there may often be seen a line of stunted yews, or hollies, or junipers, straggling up the slope, or a mountain-ash jutting out slantwise from the side of some narrow ravine and almost bridging the watercourse. The bilberry, like the heather, is at times found growing at great heights, especially in the rockier and less accessible places, such as the sides of Tryfan or Scafell Pike, where it flourishes amazingly in some seasons and produces berries of giant size.[20]

Not less delightful is that close-fitting vestment of the hills, which follows so faithfully each ripe curve and contour, and so trimly encircles the projecting bosses of rock--the short crisp sward, on which the mountain sheep have their pasture. Even the stoniest tracts are softened, here and there, by these verdant interspaces, and it is refreshing to see a steep saddle of turf flung across a craggy ridge, or a streak of greenery running far down, like a path, among the grey and pathless screes. These grass banks are in parts notched and graded into a kind of natural stair, easy to climb and luxurious to descend; elsewhere they have a smooth and glassy surface which in dry weather becomes highly polished and rather treacherous to the feet.

Very inviting, too, are the narrow winding tracks, models of skilful engineering, which sheep and shepherds between them have worn along the slopes--slender thoroughfares which often skirt the fells for some distance at the same level, and offer a less toilsome footing to those whose course is round some projecting bluff or hollow combe. A terrace-road, where one has a steep rise on one side and a steep drop on the other, is always a delight, even when one’s terrace is but a tiny sheep-path of a few inches’ width; nor is there any need to go to show places, such as the so-called “Precipice Walk” at Dolgelly, for a sensation which can be enjoyed in abundance on any unfrequented hillside.

But let it be supposed that verdure of any kind is lacking, and that we stand face to face with an expanse of bare cliff and scree--such as the south face of the Great Gable--the solid cliffs rising above, and the broken screes streaming downward and outward from their base. Here is barrenness indeed, yet a barrenness which, to the lover of such solitudes, is more fruitful than the choicest vineyard or cornfield. For how weird and suggestive is this stationary rock-fall of screes, this stony glacier arrested in its flow, yet retaining in its stillness something of the undulant shape! Viewed from across the glen, it looks like a great “tongue” of rocks lolling out from the mouth of the gorge many hundreds of feet above, and gradually widening in its fall; at closer quarters, it presents itself as a tolerably compact mass of individual boulders, none of any great size, across which it is necessary to pick one’s way with some deftness, because, like Wordsworth’s cloud, it “moveth altogether if it move at all,” and a floundering step may set half the hillside creeping daleward.

It is centuries, no doubt, since these detached stones fell from their holdings, and they are themselves for the most part weather-worn and sun-stained like the parent crags, but they are still occasionally reinforced by new outcasts, when some exposed layer of rock has become disintegrated by winter frosts and rains; and then the story of the latest landslip is written visibly for several years in the paler hue of the screes and in the discordant rift in the escarpment. As a rule, falling stones, so great a danger in the Alps, are rare among our mountains; once or twice in a season, perhaps, you may see, or hear, a big stone go thundering down the hillside when no human agency has been at work.

I refer to human agency, because the mention of falling stones reminds me of the now disused sport of crag-bowling. The rolling of stones down mountain sides, still a recognized method of warfare among hillsmen, has rightly been anathematized in this peaceful country since rock-climbing became popular; but in the old days, when no one went on the crags, it was a harmless and diverting practice. Thus Gilpin, in his travels among the mountains of Cumberland, a hundred and thirty years back, remarked how the native children amused themselves in this manner; and Bingley, describing his ascent of Tryfan some half-century later, observes: “We stood on a mere point, and on each side of us was a precipice more deep than any I had before seen; we united our strength, and rolled down it several huge pieces of rock.” Forty years ago it was common to see guides and tourists assiduously engaged in the sport, the process of which was somewhat as follows. Having first selected a steep “scar,” or a grass slope, with a pool if possible at the foot of it, and having made sure that neither man nor sheep was in the line of fire, the party turned their attention to some “huge stone,” as Wordsworth has it,

Couched on the bald top of an eminence,

and expended such energy as they had to spare in detaching this rock from its station, until it slowly toppled over, gathered fierce speed, went smoking and crashing down the hillside, and buried itself with a wild plunge in the waters. Such was the pastime, a sort of vicarious glissade, and from my own bygone enjoyment of it I have been led to hope that the famous “labours” of Sisyphus, who, according to the old Greek legend, was condemned in Hades to roll a large block up a hill only--only!--to see it roll down again, were not quite so cheerless a form of punishment as poets have feigned. The self-imposed labours of the tobogganist seem to belong to the same class.

But if any reader thinks that so dangerous a game as crag-bowling ought not to receive even this faint retrospective approval, let me add, as a warning, that I know one pilgrim who, for his former indulgence in it, sometimes pays the penalty in dreams. He has loosened, maybe, from its high parapet some monster of a rock, in weight and girth far exceeding any upon which he ever laid waking hands, and no sooner has he launched it on its mad career than he remembers with horror unspeakable that there is a cottage in the glen below--even now he sees its chimneys as the crag goes thundering towards it, and he awakes in remorseful agony at the sickening thud upon the roof.

From the loose screes we turn naturally to the stone walls, where some at least of the scattered blocks have found lodgment and reconstruction. So familiar are these walls to us, and so closely associated with the hillside itself, that they seem to be a natural part of it, as the bridges of the valleys, and one would not willingly miss them from the bare landscape. It is rather surprising, indeed, to find De Quincey speaking of the “sad injury” done to the beauty of a mountainous country by its stone walls; for to some of us the stone wall has a more native charm in such districts than any quickset hedgerow could have: it has often furnished us with a shelter in storm, a shade in heat, a lunching and a siesta-place; we love it, too, as the haunt of our mountain companions, the wheatear and the rock-ousel. The scaling of a seven-foot wall, when the top stones have become insecure, may present some difficulty to the novice, and it is then that he is glad to find one of those convenient loop-holes or rather sheep-holes, through which, after temporarily removing the door-stone, he may insinuatingly worm himself. On some of the lower slopes, especially among the foot-hills near the seacoast, these walls are often of huge girth and solidity, and, being overgrown and intertwined with numberless ivies, mosses, and lichens, have a rare and peculiar beauty; but the increasing use of barbed wire, as an adjunct or substitute for the walls, is yet another sign of the vandalism which in so many ways is working havoc among the hills.

But of all the treasures of the hillside the brightest and purest are its water springs, sources of those many Welsh “afons,” and English “gills” and “becks,” whose beauty might convince the most hardened and sceptical of town-dwellers that the Naiads were something more than a dream. Follow one of these swift mountain rivers, such as the Cumbrian Esk or the Cambrian Llugwy, or better still, perhaps, one of the lesser and more headlong freshets, from its deep pools and rock-basins in the lower valley to its birthplace under the heights, and you will marvel at the prodigality of its charms--so deliciously do the waves come dancing and singing down the slopes in a succession of hidden falls, no two of which are alike, or in an open cascade of white foam, such as often wins for such streams in the Lake District the name of “Sour Milk Gill”; and at last, as the current dwindles, you will trace it to some brimming tarn, or to its high fount in green mosses among the rocks, or will possibly lose it underground, where it may be heard bubbling and gurgling below the stones in its invisible cradle.

These becks, it must be remembered, unlike the turbid snow-fed torrents of Switzerland, are as clear as crystal, so that in calm weather you may see every pebble at the bottom of the pools, and the trout poised with waving fins; but after a heavy rainfall, when the streams are in “spate,” it is often no easy matter to ford them, for then the merest runnels, across which you step to-day without hindrance, may to-morrow be a raging flood. On the other hand, there are times, though much less frequent, when the smaller streamlets are withered up under a spell of summer heat, and their dry channels are useful only as a stone staircase for the climber, who in such seasons may become acquainted, as never before, with the feeling of thirst. I think the sorest temptation I ever underwent, without succumbing to it, was when, on my first visit to Scafell Pike with two fellow undergraduates, on a burning August day, we found a jug of claret-cup left to keep cool, in the spring above Esk Hause, by a party which had trustfully preceded us to the summit. It must have been owing to some morally bracing influence in the high mountain air that that cup was untouched by us: had we been subjected to the same ordeal on the banks of the Cam, it seems but too certain that not one drop could have been spared.

The mountain tarns, in which many of the becks have their origin, lie for the most part in hidden recesses, unsuspected from below, under the crowning heights, and mark the beginning of the last stage in the ascent. It is rather curious that the older school of nature-lovers should have felt themselves disposed to melancholy rather than to joyfulness amid such scenes; even Wordsworth speaks of a “not unpleasing sadness” as naturally induced by the sight of these pools, and surmises that “the prospect of a body of pure water, unattended with groves and other cheerful rural images by which fresh water is usually accompanied, and unable to give furtherance to the meagre vegetation around it, excites a sense of some repulsive power strongly put forth.”[21] Here is a strange relic, in the mind of a great modern poet, of the medieval sense of antagonism between man and nature: we now think rather of these remote tarns as wells of life and healing, to be repaired to by the pilgrim who needs refreshment and comfort in the jostling conflict of mankind.

With the features which I have mentioned, the barren hillside is not likely to lose its attractiveness for nature-lovers. A wilderness it may be, but of a sort which brings to mind the rapt words of the poet--

Oh, wilderness were paradise enow.

VII

Slag-Heap or Sanctuary?

Mountains have in all ages given asylum to free races. Has the time come when a free race must give asylum to its mountains? If we are to have any voice in the answer, the question is one which, in this country at least, cannot much longer be set aside; for though the encroachments of “civilization” on wild Nature have been more or less discussed since the famous “Tours” of Thomas Pennant created the modern tourist, and sent him roaming through the hills, the problem of how to preserve our mountain scenery--if we wish to preserve it--has become much more pressing with the great industrial development of the past hundred years, and it is no exaggeration to say that if it is not solved within the next half-century there may be no mountain scenery to preserve.

It is not to be doubted that, as civilization advances, mountain districts, like all other wild districts, must be gradually “opened out,” and made to minister more fully to human wants; but, then, what _are_ those wants, and how can they best be gratified? The man who owned the goose that laid the golden eggs wanted golden eggs, but his too hasty method of opening out the goose defeated the purpose he had in view. In like manner, if we want to make our mountains more serviceable to the people, we must think whether the methods which we are at present adopting will conduce to that end. Look at the working of these methods among the Cambrian and Cumbrian hills.

Snowdonia has long been a sufferer from foreign and native aggression. It is said that Edward I, to celebrate his conquest of Wales, held “a triumphal fair” on Snowdon, in open defiance of the national sentiment by which this peak was held as holy as was Parnassus by the Greeks. What is more surprising is that the Welsh themselves have in later times so fully acquiesced in the defilement of their sacred mountain, and that the present plight of Snowdon would seem to be a pride rather than a shame to them; for all earlier outrages sink into nothingness when compared with the work of the past fifty years. The copper-mines in Cwm Dyli, which have been worked, and neglected, and worked again, have greatly defaced the mountain, have poisoned the waters, and submerged the islands of Llyn Llydaw, once the haunt of the sea-gull; but it was not until the railway was built from Llanberis, and an hotel placed on the summit, that irreparable harm was done by deforming the natural shape of Y Wyddfa, the topmost peak, into a dull, blunted cone.

Take the case of the River Glaslyn, which flows from the heart of Snowdon through Cwm Dyli and Nant Gwynant, till it finds its way by the Pass of Aberglaslyn to the sea. Visitors are often invited to admire the “power works,” erected a few years ago at the head of Nant Gwynant, and other signs of enterprise; but from the nature-lover’s point of view, there is a different tale to tell, for the glorious waterfall, through which the stream dashed headlong from Cwm Dyli, has been replaced by a line of hideous metal pipes, by which the whole hillside is scarred. As for the far-famed Pass of Aberglaslyn, defaced as it is by railway works and tunnellings, remorselessly begun and then temporarily abandoned, its state can only be described as one of stagnant devastation.

It is a curious fact, too, that this greed for exploiting the natural scenery of Wales goes hand in hand with a complete neglect of such legitimate and really useful means of utilizing the tourist-season as the erection of signposts, and the maintenance of bridle-paths and mountain-tracks, which, without disfiguring the scenery, are of great service to walkers.

Such is the latter state of this Welsh mountain, of which it used to be said that “whoever slept upon Snowdon would wake inspired.” The inspiration which to-day awaits those who wake upon Y Wyddfa is the sight of a hostel “standing where it ought not,” with the usual appurtenances of civilization--post-office, railway-station, refreshment-rooms, cigar-ends, urinals, hordes of trippers, to whom the mountain means no more than the pier at Margate or the terrace at Windsor--almost everything that is civilized except a police-station, and who knows but even that may come? If there is still any “beauty born of murmuring sound” among the dwellers on Snowdon, it must be born of the slow-panting locomotive, or of the gurgling of whiskies in the hotel. And the view? In clear weather, we are told, it embraces the coast of Ireland. I have seen it embrace a line of “washing,” hung out to dry on the edge of the Glaslyn precipice.

In Cumberland, thanks to the efforts of a few faithful defenders and the powerful sentiment aroused by the Lake poets, there has been much less desecration, and the recent attempts of vandalism on these remaining strongholds of Nature have been mostly repulsed; indeed, it might be thought that the immediate danger in this quarter comes in part from overzealous friends, and that it is time a limit were put to the well-meant but mischievous practice of building memorial tablets in record either of personal associations or of fatal accidents. That the guide-books should tell us how Scott’s “pilgrim of Nature” lost his life on Helvellyn, and how Matthew Arnold took a meditative walk there, is well enough; but to erect stones in memory of these events, and marble crosses on the various spots where rash cragsmen have fallen, seems rather indiscreet; for it is not fitting that a wild mountain should be plastered, like a lecture-hall or a cemetery, with epitaphs and inscriptions.

But it must not be supposed that Lakeland has not suffered even as Wales has done, though in a less degree, from the ravages of commercialism. Coniston is a sad proof of the contrary, where that once beautiful mountain, the Old Man, has been so ruined by the copper-mines that, as has been said of the gold-fields of Colorado, “the hills have been flayed of all their grass and scalped of all their timber; they are scarred and gashed and ulcerated all over from past mining operations--so ferociously does little man scratch at the breasts of his great calm mother when he thinks that jewels are there hidden.” I was told by Ruskin, whose windows at Brantwood looked westward across Coniston Water to the Old Man, that he thought the very sky above the mountain-top was poisoned and clouded by the mines.

Take the case of Thirlmere, too, that once wild and winding tarn, so narrow at the middle that it was spanned by a rustic bridge, but now enlarged into a Manchester water-tank. It is true that in this case--unlike the majority--a useful purpose was attained; but are we to believe that the _general_ interests of the country are promoted by such feats of engineering, by which Thirlmere was “improved” into what we now see it--a formless sheet of water, with a large dam at its lower end, some ornamental water-works on its banks, and a few submerged homesteads below its waves? No wonder that the coachmen who ply between Keswick and Grasmere are never weary of pointing out to the passengers these triumphs of human skill. And now Haweswater is to suffer a like fate.

The desecration of our mountains is but part of the widespread contempt for natural scenery which may be seen from end to end of the land; but it is among mountains, where Nature is at her wildest, that it strikes us the most. From what filthy-mindedness comes the strange conviction that a clear, swift stream is the right and proper receptacle for the rubbish of human homes?[22] I know a Welsh village, the type, alas! of many villages in Wales, and elsewhere, in which from the houses built on the steep bank of a pure mountain torrent there dribbles down into the river a tributary river of filth--dust, broken bottles, paper, old boots, decaying vegetables, and all kinds of refuse--for thus it is that the country-folk muse on the gifts of Nature,

And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

Nor is it only on the natives of these districts that such reproach must fall; for, unhappily the state of some of the well-known peaks and gullies, both in Wales and Cumberland, proves that many visitors also forget their duties to the hills. I have seen the famous Needle Gully, on the south flank of the Gable, literally lined with sandwich-papers and other mementos of climbing parties, whose members would be ashamed to treat St. Paul’s or Westminster Abbey with the like disrespect; and if the skilled cragsman can be guilty of such sacrilege, can we hope that the ordinary tripper will be more reverent in his ways?

Such acts are at least indications of a barbaric mood in the public mind, which, when expressed in the form of commercial enterprise, is capable of wreaking more damage on the mountains than a waterspout or an earthquake; and the question presents itself: Will this mood pass or be abated before a fatal mischief is done? For bad as things are now, there may be worse to follow. “Thank God,” said Thoreau, “they cannot cut down the clouds.” But can they not? With aeroplanes once perfected, will not the cloud, that “mountain o’er a mountain,” share the fate of the hills? No mountain, assuredly, will escape. “As to the loftiest peaks of the Andes and Himalayas,” said Reclus, “too high in the regions of cold for man to go to their summits, the day will come when he shall be able to reach them. Balloons have already carried him two or three thousand yards high; other aeronauts will bear and deposit him on Gaourisankar, as far as the ‘great diadem of the dazzling heaven.’”

The danger lies not so much in the accessibility of cloud or mountain as in the reckless and irreverent spirit of the man who attains them. To soar to “the great diadem” is no harm; but if we turn the great diadem into a great muck-heap, shall we be the gainers by our flight?

Nor is it only the mountains that are being ruined by man’s brutishness; the extinction of the wild life of the mountains is also threatened. It has to be remembered that these remote ranges are almost the only haunt where certain rare animals can still, to some extent, hold their own. Scarcely more than a hundred years ago the eagle was breeding in Borrowdale, as it still breeds in parts of the Scottish Highlands; and whether the present century shall witness the extermination of the buzzard, the kite, the peregrine, the raven, and other rare species, must depend partly on the protection afforded them by law against the sporting naturalist or “collector,” mainly on the preservation of the mountains themselves from the commercialists’ greed. Shall we ever have the wisdom to make each such district into an asylum for bird and mountain alike? At present the lover of wild Nature, himself somewhat of a _rara avis_, must be thankful for what is spared in his time; but it is his duty to think of the future also, and to avert, if he may do so, the ruin which he clearly foresees.

We come back, therefore, to the question whether we wish to hand on these mountains to our descendants as mountains or as something else. For if we allow our company-promoters to carve and tunnel the crags, to enlarge and discolour the lakes, to poison the streams, and to drive away the wild life from the hills, are we not once more killing the goose that laid the golden eggs? These hills of ours are small as compared with the great mountains of Europe, but they are as beautiful, and they are unique, and once ruined they cannot by any ingenuity be restored. It is true that Switzerland is employed in the same manner in spoiling the Jungfrau and Mont Blanc, but it must be remembered that Switzerland has a practically unlimited reserve of Alps, while we have but few mountains to spoil.[23] At present they are still something more than a playground for gymnasts, or a picnic-ground for tourists; they are mountains, a piece of unsophisticated wild Nature in our midst, and as such, their value, to those who know it, is beyond words. Let them still be a playground and a picnic-ground by all means, but under such conditions as will preserve their native features and their higher character. One would think that a nation which can spend thousands of millions on a foreign war might afford to become the owner of its own mountains at home!

The pretence that there is something selfish and anti-democratic in the desire to save our mountain scenery from destruction is absurd; on the contrary, it is entirely owing to its devotion to the fetish of “property” that the public has so long allowed these places to be exploited for private gain, and has stood by in utter apathy and indifference while a handful of speculators and traders have benefited at the expense of the community. Nor do we give to our mountains even that protection which other antiquities enjoy. What would be said if a Bill were submitted and passed in Parliament to authorize some private company to pull Westminster Abbey or Stonehenge to pieces and make a profit out of the ruins? It is no exaggeration to say that the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments would have the whole nation at its back in its resistance to such vandalism; yet a mountain such as Snowdon is a far more ancient monument than Stonehenge or the Abbey, and the vandalism which is now being successfully accomplished is of a still more insensate kind.

It is a hollow fallacy, too, to suppose that it is “democratic” to fill up and destroy the rare silences and solitary spaces that a land may still possess, on the plea that they cannot be enjoyed by all. They _can_ be enjoyed by all who are fitted to enjoy them, and the benefits that result from such enjoyment are in the long-run shared by all the nation alike. To make a railway to the top of a mountain such as Snowdon, and then to argue that it is a blessing to the weakly folk who could not otherwise get there, is to overlook the fact that it is not to the cripples, but to the community, that the mountain belongs. “Whatsoever,” says the communist Reclus, “may be the future of man, or the aspect of the world which he may create for himself, solitude, in that portion of Nature which is left free, will become more and more necessary to those men who wish to obtain renewed vigour of thought, far from the conflict of opinions and voices. If the beautiful spots of the world should one day become a mere rendezvous for the worn and weary, they who love to live in the open air will have nothing left them but to take refuge in a bark on the midst of the waves.… Happily the mountain will always contain the sweetest places of retreat for him who flies from the beaten paths of fashion.”

Wherein, then, lies the remedy for the dangers which I have described? Within recent years there has been much rejoicing over the rescue of two or three estates in the Lake District, such as Catbells and Gowbarrow, from the clutch of the speculator, and all honour is certainly due to those by whom these victories were won; but it is evident that large sums of money cannot for ever be raised by private subscription to buy off the day of doom, and that while one favoured tract is being thus protected, another less fortunate one is being lost. We cannot save our mountains by these piecemeal purchases from the harpies who threaten them; such methods are too troublesome, too costly, too purely local to be successful in the main. There is only one thorough solution of the problem, and that is to nationalize such districts as Snowdonia, Lakeland, the Peak of Derbyshire, and other public holiday-haunts, and so to preserve them for the use and enjoyment of the people for all time. If parks, open spaces, railways, tramways, water, and other public needs can be municipalized, why not mountains? It is impossible to over-estimate the value of mountains as a recreation-ground for soul and body, yet, while we are awaking to the need of maintaining public rights in other directions, we are allowing our mountains--in North Wales and elsewhere--to be sacrificed to commercial selfishness. If Snowdon, for instance, had been purchased by the public twenty years ago, the investment would have been a great deal more profitable than those in which we usually engage; but while we are willing to spend vast sums on grabbing other people’s territory, we have not, of course, a penny to spare for the preservation of our own.

What we need, in short, is the appointment of mountain sanctuaries--highland parks, where the hills themselves, with the wild animals and plants whose life is of the hills, shall be preserved in their wildness as the cherished property of the people--consecrated places, where every one shall be entitled to walk, to climb, to rest, to meditate, to study Nature, to disport himself as he will, but _not_ to injure or destroy. When we truly care for these hills of ours, we shall remove them from the tender mercies of the mine-owners and railway lords, who now seek profit in their disfigurement, and shall place them under a council of mountaineers and naturalists and nature lovers who understand and reverence them, with the instruction that they shall so administer their charge as to add to the present happiness and the permanent wealth of the nation. How long will it take us, hag-ridden as we are by the nightmare of private ownership, to awake to the necessity of such a change?