Beneath the trees in the orchards the early snowdrops are the only wild-flowers; hollies and other evergreens stand out sombre and heavy amid the sere woodlands; the closest observation reveals not an opening bud on the hardiest hedgerow. Everything is gray and dead and cold between the bridge over the rock chasm and the distant fells, where in the ghylls and hollows small fields of snow contrast chill white to the dim blue slopes around.

Such is my argument, and yet——

To begin with, the bridge beneath our feet is interesting; a score varieties of hardy ferns thrive in its crevices. The beck rushes twenty feet below its single arch, churning round in a basin scooped by its own rude efforts here, rushing with feeble thunder over an abrupt rock there, sliding in green volumes down a smooth slab anon, to settle finally in a narrow rock-bound pool. Wrens are already flitting about the dense masses of ivy which trail over one side of the gorge—opposite the gray outer wall of the old mill—the longest fairy-rope hanging nearly halfway to the pellucid waters. And what is this slumming in jerky flight upstream—a little bird decked in blue and red splendours? Where the mill-wheel resounds to the thumping of hidden waters, and lazily draws round its dripping, mossy buckets, the kingfisher hangs a second in the air. Were you to descend, you would find a ‘rat-hole’ there, in a seam of clay between heavy strata of rock, the mouth partially veiled by the rushing spent-water from the wheel. A few years have passed since, with the heedlessness of youngsterdom, I scrambled from this bridge down to the water-wheel. The mill was not working at that hour, but a fair current of water poured down the spent-way. I was standing ankle-deep in this, gazing up at the great wheel, when there was a faint snatch of a kingfisher’s song outside, and I turned to watch its burnish of blue and red glint past in the sunshine. But the bird turned, and, without abating its speed, dashed into the veil of descending water close to my feet. A minute later I had turned this aside, and was possessed of the kingfisher’s secret. Two neat bluish eggs reposed within the crevice on a bed of fish-bones, etc. Year after year the bird had hatched her brood in the sound of the mill-wheel without discovery. That bird pausing in its flight knows of the hidden dwelling, perchance has called it ‘home,’ and is now thinking of paying it an early visit But no! as it wavers it notes strange appearances above the bridge. It flirts forward, beneath us, a line of flashing metallic sheens, and goes winging upstream at a tremendous pace.

From the bridge, northward, past the stone mounting-block. Close beside, in white gushing founts, the beck is fretting its way down a rugged channel. Here and there a rock is crowned with a gray patch of grass. In summer this will be an islet of glory, its rich green pall beneath a cloud of dancing blue harebells and golden-eyed white ghoods (marguerites). The hillsides towering around are gray—gray streaked with broad lines and patches of green bog-moss and water-grass; along their slopes great boulders are strewed. These vagrant rocks are most plentiful near the cliff. Our eye catches a faint dot hovering above: a buzzard hawk—since the raven retired to less accessible peaks—the monarch of these wilds. A colony of rooks inhabit a cluster of oak-trees beside the road, their hoarse caws rising over the tumult of surging waters. Just here the river takes a sharp turn, and we are suddenly brought in sight of an old and disused bobbin-mill. Time was—and deserted Cocks Close null is a memento of it—when the trade of bobbin-making was prosperous in this and many another contiguous valley. Three mills—one near the bridge, this at Cocks Close, and one further upstream, which has completely disappeared as a building, though its excavated waterways remain—were in full swing, and every cottage for miles around was inhabited. Cocks Close is beyond the stream. A couple of thick spruces have been laid side by side, and span the chasm. Walk upon them. They sway fearsomely. Do not touch that hand-rail: of its four posts, not one is soundly fixed, and some day soon the forty feet of rail will fall away of its own accord. The two trees sag differently under our weight, so that on the perilous passage your right foot is often placed on a quivering log a foot lower than that supporting your left. I crossed here once on a wild November evening; a gale was blowing, and the river was in full flood. In the scant light prevailing great darkling jets seemed to toss within a foot of the trembling structure. Daring beyond discretion, I waited for a lull in the storm, and then started to cross. I had not got more than halfway, when, with a sharp, snarling roar, the furies were around me. It probably happened in a second, but the time seemed long hours to me. The powerful gale gradually pressed me further and further over; the frail black pathway over those dancing waters seemed to fail, and I felt something must soon give way. After a long interval my mind began to work. I threw myself flat on the pine bridge, holding on with hands and feet till the wild gust spent itself. I don’t care to be in such a position again.

Further up the dale the river goes far away from the road; we see it across the fields occasionally. Yonder is a heron fishing, or, more likely, feasting on fish which have met with death on the spawning-redds. Friend Jammie is a well-known beckside bird here, and we will possibly meet him later at closer quarters. That cock crows in a peculiar high-pitched clarion. Yet that is the call of the real fighting cock. The bird is leisurely strolling across the road with its harem, or ‘mantling aboot as if t’ farm belonged to it,’ as its owner avers. Stop a moment, and I will ask him about the bird and cock-fighting.

‘Ay, Tam’s varra fair,’ shortly admits the dalesman, in reply to my spoken admiration of his champion. As he speaks he eyes me curiously. This sort of conversation from a stranger means either that the other is of the ‘cocker’ cult or an ally of the powers that be ranged against that interesting sport.

‘My, but his spurs are short!’ I remark as innocently as I can possibly muster.

A glimmer of recognition lights up his face.

‘It’s thee, is it? I didn’t ken thee. What, man! I’ve nivver seen thee sen that main as was brokken up by t’ police.‘

The dalesman apparently recollects myself and that occasion well, for did he not mount guard over me? Wandering over a lonely moor, up hill and down dale, I suddenly walked into a cockpit. Two men had just released their birds, which were prancing around the tiny greensward, hectoring one another and gradually infuriating themselves to an attack. I had wandered through the line of scouts, always, in these days of persecution, posted by watchful ‘cockers’; but being where I was and a mere stripling, I was compelled to stay, lest I should put the authorities on the track, and, indeed, had got somewhat interested in the sport, when a sudden alarm caused the ring to disperse hurriedly. As I sped away, I saw the enraged cocks still battling wildly on the arena, and saw two or three sacks, which evidently contained other feathered gladiators, lying on the ground some yards away. Celerity in putting myself through the cordon of police alone saved me from being haled before the magistrates with the ‘cockers’ and their birds.

‘Dosta ken Tam? he is the varra [very] spit an’ image o’ t’ bird as wod ha’ [would have] won t’ main on t’ fell.‘

Yes, now I remember. What a beautiful form that bird had! Tam is as like it as two peas. Not leggy and tall, but compact in build, a fighter of a fighting strain. Glorious red plumage as close in texture as leather, stout thighs beneath whose short feathers the muscles quiver. But who can describe the fighting cock? There is a distinction about its movements, a pride in the poise of its head, the contour of which, though wattles and comb are clipped short, is still beautiful. But beauty and majesty are to be expected in an inheritor of three centuries of bluest blood; and as for courage, neither weight nor size matters much to the fighting cock. Like the other pet of the dalesmen, the trail-hound, it is trained to go to a finish, odds be as they may. A fighting cock and a turkey-cock were holding an impromptu main the other day in a farmyard until actively interfered with. A few words more of admiration of his pet puts the dalesman entirely at his ease, and he breaks freely into reminiscences and explanation.

‘How do we fit the spurs on to a fighting-cock? Well, wait a minute and I’ll show you.’ He steps into the whitewashed cottage, and in a few seconds returns with a pair of polished steels. ‘These are the spurs; they’re of the varra [very] best steel, and you mun [must] mind, because they’re sharp. My father hes a pair of silver ones that his grandfather wan [won] when a lad of sixteen, at a girt [great] main at Ooston [Ulverston] Fair. There used to be some cocking then, but, of course, noo it’s called illegal.’ Now flamed forth the ire of a republican countryside. ‘And why was it forbidden? For nowt [nothing] else than because the quality couldn’t show off and win all t’ mains. Old Squire———, grandfather of him that hes the Bank Hall now, paid many a hundred pound trying to pit a bird that could stand up to the first four in t’ dale when Lady Mary’s bell1 was fought for.’

‘How do you fix these spurs?’

‘Well, you see’—the verbal storm had passed, and the cocker was in earnest on his sport—'the cock’s spurs are shaved down as far as possible, then’—Tam, seeing the gleaming weapons and scenting a battle, had strolled up to us, so with a dexterous sweep of the arm the dalesman captured him and gave us an object-lesson on the craft—'these are slipped on—they just fit—over the spur, and fastened round the leg. Now’—releasing

Tam, who forthwith set up a defiant and hasty crowing—‘he’s fit to fight, except that his comb and wattles would have to be shorn.’

‘In cock-fighting the most active and alert bird wins. The birds face each other and try to jump, so that when descending the sharp spurs will cut into their opponent which is, of course, beneath. The wounds in cock-fighting, save for occasional pecks, are almost always on the head, neck, and back. Most are slight, the thick felting of feathers stopping all but the most directly delivered strokes. Some cockers, when the birds are fairly set to, will not allow them to be separated, but I never let my cock down into a ring unless it is agreed that any fighter cut down—that is, knocked off its feet with a blow from the spurs—is considered beaten. Most cockers want to see a kill, and they have their way.‘

‘Not much cocking done nowadays, you think. Well, as it’s you, and ye’ve seen a bit of it, I wod [would] say that there’s more going on now than ivver there’s been sen cock-fighting was put down. I know a dozen gentlemen, men with big estates and fine houses, as are magistrates and on t’ County Council, as hod [hold] many a main, and they say one parson isn’t again tekkin’ [taking] a bird on if it’s kept quiet. Way over Furness, there’s hundreds and hundreds of cockers, man, and more every year, and it’s a bonny sport more to them as takes an interest in it.’

So saying, the dalesman turns to again admire his pet. A stranger is coming along the road—our friend swoops down on the bespurred Tam and bears him out of sight; we, feeling somewhat guilty, walk on up the dale.

The river is again close by; a slight bank separates it from the road. The waters are babbling pleasantly over a long array of shingles; here and there an attenuated trout fins languidly along. The spawning season has just passed; these valley becks are shallow, with no deep, silent pools to hold an almost inexhaustible supply of fish-food. So shallow is even the main stream on the redds that, when a long frost causes it to dwindle in volume, the fish are often frozen down to the gravel their eggs are deposited in. When the thaw floods come, the dead bodies are washed far away, into odd corners beneath bending willows and behind rocks, food in plenty for otter and heron.

Here is a bridge of the old type, tall of arch and narrow of roadway, and crowning the short ascent in front is the churchyard. It boasts a sundial, but it is loose on a decaying post. The church itself is quite a new one, superseding a mouldy, dark building of unknown antiquity. Yet the building is interesting, for does it not contain the archives of the dale—wondrously complex churchwarden accounts dating back over a hundred years, and rich in personal touches of old-time men and women? The churchwardenship was then the most responsible position in the valley; the holder was directly responsible for the welfare of the poor. Charity was dispensed with sound judgment, and only to relieve necessity. The famous Smit Book is here, but, alas! it is no longer carried by the priest2 to the nearest Shepherds’ Meet in order that disputes may be properly settled, and lost sheep, by their fleece and horn-marks, traced.

The valley is now opening out; to right and left great rock-strewn bluffs bound its almost level bed. Floods are of frequent occurrence here, but they run off the land quickly. I have waked at dawn. Since midnight a storm had raged, and great films of falling rain crashed resoundingly against window and door of our cottage. Outside the level of the dale is occupied by a sullen lake, stretching far toward the mountains; the rain-squalls are ploughing its surface with wide white furrows. The storm ceases suddenly; the cloud-banks trail reluctantly from the fells, revealing a paradise of falling waters. Six hours later the broad acres are showing green and soaked, and the river is back in its channel. Such brief life, though furious, has a flood of the fell lands.

Through the leafless alders lining the ghylls we see, in gushing white, rivulets descending from the unseen moors. On our right Gray Crag heaves up its plainer, grassier shoulder; and next to it is Anchorite’s Breast, where in a shallow cave by the beckside legend says an anchorite from the monastery at Shap dwelt many a year. The monks in this district seem to have been very self-contained in their dealings, and were much misunderstood by the half-pagan, half-Christian Saxons about them. It is stated that the dwellers in the dale refused to furnish the hermit with food. His weary track over the long moor to the abbey can, it is averred, even now be traced.

But to-day, instead of pensive monks, on the wild gray tracts of grass are seen men moving at a run. The dalesman loves a fox-hunt dearly. He is tireless in the pursuit. Miles of open country glide beneath his feet. On the rough crags and moraines his dexterity is marvellous. The hunt is in full cry on the hillside. The hounds are going at a great pace; the men are every moment further and further in the rear. A quick eye might even catch the tiny brown form of the fox running for its very life. For some minutes we watch them sweep along, at first parallel to the dale, then gradually turning up and up the mountainside to its crest. Hound after hound leaps on to the tall wall, halts a brief second, his form outlined against the bright blue sky, then disappears, and faint, long-drawn-out voices are all we have of a mountain fox-hunt.

As we turn away we begin to meet numbers of the chase. They tell us the pack are well up to their fox, that they will hunt him in the next dale, maybe, but unless they kill they will bring him back again. Maybe about Yewbarrow, says one, as he trudges briskly along; about Swinbank, argues another, and takes things more leisurely. Now two men in pink are coming towards us. What a change to eyes full of sombre gray and green is a flash of warm colour! It is the veteran master of the pack and his huntsmen. The dalesmen salute the elder cheerfully. He has a word for all, and a pleasant one, too. He is wiry in build; his genial face is wrinkled. He has doffed black hunting-cap; his hair, cropped short beneath, is silvern. This is the man who for two generations has provided sport in the dales. John Peel was not less deserving of the grand hunting-song than he is. With a courteous salutation he passes us by. Many a time I have thought of and sighed for the splendid hunts he has witnessed both before and since the last ‘greyhound’ fox was killed.

A mile further on the road crosses a short rise caused by an outcropping vein of white felspar. To the right is one of those conical mounds dubbed by dalesmen either ‘ancient fortresses,’ ‘barrows,’ or ‘haycocks,’ formed by the glacial process of denudation and deposit in days long past.

For a couple of hours it has seemed as though we were walking along a level, but from this slight eminence we see that the dale is but as a shelf sloping downwards from the mountains. The bluffs which dominated the view at our starting are now insignificant in the distance, and we look over their tops to a broad, undulating valley. In front of us is the dalehead, a small subvalley, the entrance a narrow ‘gate’ between two converging ribs of mountain, the exit a rugged track winding up rock-strewn braes.

There is but one tenement in sight, an ancient sheep-farm perched quite close to the rocky river-bed. Its buildings are very old; one or two possess floors of trodden earth probably dating back four hundred years. The yeoman who possesses the domain is much respected. Further up the stream than Sacgill is a level strewn with beaches of stone. Here at some time has been a small lake, but the torrents have completely buried it in dÉbris. Their activity is so great that the whole dale has to contribute to the cost of a retaining barrier here. Otherwise in a single winter 10,000 tons of stones would be washed down, the river-bed would be choked for miles, and the stream would run riot down the dale, turning into marshy bogs what are now carefully-drained pastures. The prophecy of ‘Every valley shall be exalted, and every hill brought low,’ was once preached from a dales pulpit. ‘But net in oor day [but not in our time], O Lord!’ fervently ejaculated an aged hearer.

The dalehead, as we travel into it, presents rather a dreary aspect. Even the bogs are gray, not green as on lower heights. A few thin patches of scrubby coppice show on the slopes immediately behind the farm; a little patch of soil near the opening of a deep ghyll is clothed with a large plantation. Gray grass and tangles of rotting bracken are on the braes, but the area of naked rock, scree, and scattered boulders far exceeds these. The whole outlook is barren and forbidding. How can a farmer wrest a living from such a place? How indeed! The sheep-farm is barely remunerative in these days of cheap wool; but mountain mutton is renowned, though the producer benefits little by this.

In about half an hour we reach the choked tarn area. When its dark waters laved the lowermost scree-beds of these steep fells, the dalehead must have made a perfect picture. Even now to our left Goat Scaur raises its grand head nearly 2,000 feet above us, while on our opposite side in one huge cliff the Gray Crag stands almost as high. Both mountains are plenteously splashed with white. On the lower pitches the snow in the deepest gullies are remains of great drifts, but as the eye rises higher the white areas become more numerous; they are connected one with another, and at the top of the brae a long white curling drift resists the spring sunlight. The level beams of eventide shoot over the hills from westward, flushing the snowfields with crimson bars and glorious rosy shadows. At last, by a rough, water-torn road, we reached the summit of the pass, 2,000 feet or so above sea-level,

‘With a tumultuous waste of huge hilltops before us,’

Kidsty Pike, where the wild deer of Martindale often roam. On a day like this we saw over the glistering snowfields a stag and three hinds galloping toward Swindale, a splendid sight! Branstree, a rounded mammoth on our left, is the home of giant foxes; many a stiff run has started from its benks (grass ledges). The deeper hush of night is even now falling on the voiceless wastes. Hark! what is that? The crunching of a foot in the snow, and round a corner in the pass, toiling upwards, comes a dalesman. We hail him with delight, for the very air breeds lonesomeness.

‘I was just coming from Mardale,’ says he. ‘I’ve been driving a few sheep over as had strayed.’

He is a man of rather more than middle age, hard, wiry, full of vigour and life.

‘How long have you lived in this valley?’ I ask.

‘Was born here at a little house halfway down the dale; you’ll remember it—there are a few sap-trees overhanging it. Just before you came to that farm where dead foxes are hanging in t’ trees.‘

‘Been a shepherd all your life?’

‘Well, yes; I was ten year old when I began to shepherd on t’ fell hard aside of home. Things were a bit different then.‘

The sound of a triple tramp on the snow-patched road is all that is heard for a few moments; then, from its feast of carrion beside a rock, a great raven soars croaking up, up, up, high above the dale to where the sun still reigned. The sight of this swooping bird fills the shepherd with wrath.

‘Ay, thoo may croak,’ he says sadly, ‘but maybe we’ll be the better of thee in nesting-time.’ Then to us: ‘Those ravens are a nuisance. Every spring we have to go out nesting to keep down their numbers. They think little of attacking a weakly lamb and carrying it off among the rocks.

‘I remember well one day we went after some ravens in Goat Scaur front. Four shepherds joined me and we took plenty of ropes. Getting opposite where I thought the nest was, we descended the cliff as far as there was foothold. On the last ledge a gavelock [crowbar] was fixed to let out the rope by; then, tying a noose round my body, I stepped and downward. I could hear the old bird croaking away beneath. My mates kept letting the rope come slowly, and, of course, I went down with equal speed. At last, when I should think some fifty feet of rope had been let out, I stopped on a narrow ledge.

‘Looking cautiously about, I soon found traces of my quest: on that jutting rock it seemed that father raven had sat watching his mate sitting her couple of eggs. I carefully clambered forward to the splinter, and to my joy found the raven’s nest in sight. But in a moment my hopes were dashed. A deep narrow crack lay between me and my goal. Try as I would, the gulf could not be passed, and the old raven sitting there in security seemed to croak derision at me. However, by returning to my companions and being relowered from some more favourable spot, I hoped yet to turn the tables. So up I went, assisting my friends by rapid runs up any face of rock which gave a possible angle. In a moment I explained the situation and we were traversing the great cliff in the desired direction. When a platform for our rope-head was found, I made another descent; but, instead of the straight course I had fancied possible, a great rock overhanging the gully sent me dangling in mid-air, unable to reach foothold. However, it was possible to avoid the ugly cornice and then I climbed down the side of the gully. The old raven flapped off her nest with a wild croak as I came near, but she never went far away. More than once, with a whistling swoop, die came almost within arms’ length, and every time I prepared to parry some sudden attack with beak or wings. Probably, had her mate been within call they would not have hesitated to attack me, for in defence of its nest the raven is pretty vicious. As soon as they were within reach, I scooped up the eggs from the barrowful of filth—remains of rats and carrion lay on a bed of wool and sticks—and was rapidly drawn up to safety. One raven was shot shortly afterwards, at which the other left the neighbourhood. A good riddance for us shepherds, too!‘

II. Harvest-time on the Fells

As I wandered in solitary thought across the moor I heard voices in front of me. As the tones were in complete accord with my mood and with that region of cheerful silence, I was but mildly curious as to their origin. I lingered on the summit of a splintered outcrop of rock and looked around me. To my eye the scene was perfect. The heather was in full bloom; the air was resonant with the humming of bees, intent on petty plundering of the purple flowerets; around the heather-beds were here and there solid banklets of dainty crimson and white heatherbell, and next them the harebell’s large sky-blue corolla curtseying on its slender stalk to every swerve of the breeze. Beneath the domain of the hardy heather a waving green wilderness marked the haunt of the bracken, very rugged with fragments in its upper portion, from the crumbling hillside above, but lower down opening out an almost level ledge of the mountain.

Descending leisurely to this, I recognised some of my neighbours at work among the bracken. One was cutting the stout stems with a scythe, leaving a thick swath behind him, which another spread out so that the sun’s rays might dry it. Some two score yards away three other men were loading a sleigh with the dark-brown harvest cut some days ago, and now ready for the barn. This was a great contrast to the lowland hayfield of the farm. The ground, which from above looked so smooth and almost level, was in reality furrowed with innumerable watercourses and seamed with rocky places. One moment the sleigh timbers creaked as a sudden strain was put upon them by an unseen hollow; next the stout, handy horse drew it clear of this, and the runners were sliding with unpleasant grinding sound over a pavement of boulders. These men had been on the moors since soon after daybreak, and shortly they would have to return to their farms. I assisted to bind on the dusky load, and made down the hillside in their company. The path taken by the rude conveyance was, it seemed to me at first, a dried-up watercourse; it fell so steeply that at places our combined resistance alone prevented the sleigh from overrunning the sturdy little mare in front, while the unevenness kept us continually on the alert lest the load should, as the dalesmen put it, ‘keck ower’ at some particularly awkward point. But the cautious and sure-footed animal in the traces brought down the load with safety to the level of the mountain tarn, of which we had enjoyed almost a bird’s-eye view.

In our Lake Country dales it is impossible to grow enough straw for bedding purposes in winter, and the hayfield is often insufficient for forage; therefore the farmer turns to the uplands and draws thence the necessary supplies. Large areas of bracken are cut every year, and by primitive sleigh routes brought down to where carts can be used conveniently. The scythe used in cutting bracken is a much shorter contrivance than the ordinary one, but the work is more tiring. The ground is so covered with stones or otherwise uneven that but seldom can the labourer get two swinging strokes together, and the perpetual jerking to avoid the blade being damaged accounts for many a man’s dislike to the work.

A couple of gamekeepers as we came to the mereside were preparing a boat to row to the other end of the tarn, and, as I wished to ramble in that direction, I embarked with them. In the clear, peaty depths trout were lazily finning in and out among the gently-swaying water-weeds, and smaller fry disported nearer the surface. As we approached one point the keepers ceased rowing, in order that we might float over where a large pike lay in wait for its prey, and at a rocky islet ran ashore that I might inspect the trees where the recently shot vermin were gibbeted. The boat was forced through a fringe of blue irises to the mouth of a tiny beck, where I landed. Soon the faintly-rutted track I was following changed direction, and I struck across the heathy waste. Grouse rushed away with querulous cries, curlew and heron banished silence from the wilds, while from tussock and cevin small birds chirped and twittered. A lark high above was singing a joyous roundelay; suddenly his ringing notes were hushed, and down from his crazy height he rushed, for the raucous voice of a buzzard struck terror to the tiny winger. Wave after wave of moorland—a sameness which might almost become monotony. Each hollow, opening out its treasures, gave the same tiny stream, with myriad sphagnum bogs and stunted willows; every shallow glen was carpeted with bracken and heather. But now a change.

A great knot of fir-trees rose on the near horizon; and as I stepped up the stony ridge to which they anchored with huge cablelike roots, in front there appeared a series of distant blue mountains—the heights of Lakeland—while nearer at hand stretched outward a long triangular plateau, its apex touching the nearest fell, its base the ridge on which I stood. In about the middle of this expanse was a fairly large tarn. In about half an hour I was close to its shores. As the lower ground was reached, a score small tumuli met my eye, and on approach these proved to be of peat—miniature stacks loosely piled, so that the air circulated freely through them, and though built wet, their contents would soon become dry. At the tarn edge I spent some minutes in collecting the fine yellow water-lilies, which occur only in this tarn in our vicinity; then, espying a man at work in the distance, I made in his direction. The intervening space was swampy; sometimes by a series of grass banks I gained far, only to be stopped by a spongy bog too wide to leap. But here and there, retracing my steps, I gradually found a track across the maze; the man was mowing the reeds which in wide stretches favour such surroundings—not an easy task when the disproportion of sound land is considered. Of course, he only mowed the more accessible places; but even then he had to garner the cut stems on a hand sleigh, and draw them to a hillside where the tarn waters, if overpent after a thunder-storm, were little likely to reach. The reeds also were to be used for winter bedding; and so large a quantity is required in the dales abutting the plateau that half a dozen barns for their summer storage are in the immediate vicinity of the swamps.

Half a mile on—I was now facing eastward to reach one of the valleys—I came across a party of men digging peat. The heather tufts had been burnt away, and the thin veil of soil thrown aside to lay bare the deposits. Then, with a long narrow spade, cuts were made in the chocolate-coloured pile, so that an oblong mass was easily separated, and these were collected and wheeled aside to be piled into the loose erections previously mentioned. The dexterity of the spademan was pretty to watch; the blade of the tool was plied as freely and easily as a knife. Peat-digging on the flanks of the fells is easy compared with the same work on the lowlands, for here drainage is rapid and sufficient, and the deposits less dense and moist. Many of the dales farms still use little other fuel but peat and coppice-wood. As I stood near the labourers, I noticed a violet in bloom—a rare occurrence on such an exposed situation—and into my mind rushed an anecdote of Wonderful Walker, Vicar of the mountain parish of Seathwaite a century ago, whose life of industry and nobility of character claimed the admiration of William Wordsworth. Said he: ‘See you that violet?’—pointing to a little simple pansy that was bending its graceful flower close to the spot on which he stood. ‘Look at it, and think how it came there. Last autumn this spot was covered with bog-earth, which had probably rested on this bleak and barren moor ever since the Deluge. It was disturbed last year by the spade of the turf-getter, and now this beautiful flower has sprung up in this place! For ages and ages its seed must have remained embedded in this sour and barren bog; yet, once disturbed by the hand of man, it springs up fresh and lively, to show that God can keep alive what to the eye of man may seem to perish, and can deck with grace and beauty even the most unpromising spots of creation.’

Diverse are days among the fells—some wet, some fine. On some the mountains seem to palpitate in sultry haze; on others they stand statue-like and distinct against the bright blue skies of spring and autumn. The rocks and slopes possess ever-changing moods: grim with snow and icicles in early spring, green with grass and fern and moss later on, russet and crimson with the dying fires of the fall, gray and wan washed with the rains of winter.

Eskdale in the pride of summer. The woods are covered with heavy foliage; in the bright morn light the brackens clothing the rocky tors waves, and their fronds sparkle with drops of glory. Down the glens and over the rocks bright rivulets are dashing; sunny waters are sleeping in every hollow. The air feels buoyant, leaping with life, as though all Nature were revelling after the dun span of night. Thus for half an hour, till a cloud-bank swirls up from seaward. A dark shadow stalks along the valley; great billows of rain slash against the trees and rattle among the quivering leaves. The mountains, fringed and studded with rock, seem to throw back the storm-wrack from their sides; they tower dimly through the dark tide of drops, and as each brief paroxysm subsides they peer down again on the soaked dale. Then the squall passes on as rapidly as it came: the cap of wind soughs itself out among the swaying branches, and in a minute the air is clear, the sky blue and joyous, and with a flash the sun looks through the fast-retiring beards of mist and rain, cheering the dripping woods and bedrenched meadows, rousing skylark from the field, thrush in the brake, gilding the hurrying, foaming rills and beds of watery fern. So, with regular portions of rain and fair weather, passed two hours of the morning.

When I started the air was clear; a gray bank of cloud was wandering among the distant mountains. The bright sun glinted on Eskdale’s emerald braes and laughing cataracts. A cloudlet of steam marked the laborious approach of the tiny decrepit train which runs between Boot and Ravenglass. Many years ago a geologist traced a rich outcrop of hematite in the hills here. Capital was easily found to exploit the series of mines; labourers in hundreds flocked to the old-world valley. Nine miles of light railway were hurriedly laid. Then the mines suddenly ‘petered’ out. The expected El Dorado was a mere surface-seam of ore. Now ghylls and hillsides hide the great abrasions of that brief dawn of human energy ‘neath deep bracken and heath. The costly machinery at the pits is mere scrap, not worth transport; at some places the whole outer structure has fallen down great declivities, to rust in tangled, dismal ruin. The cabins of the miners have almost entirely disappeared; the cottages, unroofed and with trembling walls, are nearly gone. On my right the river was running with surcharged speed. Its banks could not hold its volume; the alders and rowans rooted in the water’s realm shook as the current buffeted them. Every hundred yards or so an islet divided the force of the stream. Channels long ago deserted by the river were full and strong again, surrounding large slices of meadowland, on which kingcups bloomed in profusion.

After about half an hour’s walk, I turned in where a bridge spans a gorge, where Esk would be tumbling and churning and roaring in flood lust and fury. Yesterday hardly a foot of water flowed quietly far beneath the bridge, but now the raving torrent, pent in by immovable rocks, shot beneath the arch, throwing up, as obstacles buried far beneath were struck, a smother of spray. The water had risen eight feet during the night at this point, and was probably still rising. From a rock ledge next the bridge a veteran angler was trying for sea-trout. Again and again he swung his line into the wild turmoil of currents. Possibly this man had been out since daybreak, for the sea-fish were running in large numbers. While I was present two fine fish came to his net. The second, aided by the tremendous power of the downcoming waters, made a splendid and exciting fight. Esk in flood is never more than mildly turgid, and it was not difficult to follow the fish’s evolutions. Once, with a vicious backward leap, I thought it had broken clear; but my veteran had anticipated such a move, and his line ran slack accordingly.

‘Catch many?’ I asked.

‘Season’s been rayther bad till noo,’ was his reply. ‘It’s oor first spate, this, and near t’ end of August, too.‘

‘How have you done this morning?’

‘Varra fair. Twelve, but they’re nobbut lile uns’ [only little ones]. Which to my mind was a fiction. That second sea-trout must have been a three-pounder, and that will be reckoned a big fish for Esk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IV. A Sketch of Duddonside

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V. Ghyll-climbing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VI. Mountain Moonlight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Wythburn we crossed the fields to the west shore of Thirlmere. The moon had now risen high above the mountains, making a mellow path along the waters. It was delightful, and not too cold, to lean awhile on the wall next the road, look at the long ridge of mountain we had walked upon, and to watch the flocks of wild-duck and geese quickly moving about the moonlit bays at our feet. Midnight was past long before we neared Armboth, where the ghosts of the Lake Country families are said to meet and hold occasional revel, and in another two hours, after many a halt to enjoy the glory of the night, we were at that corner in the long Castlehead whence we watched day fade from the western sky. The valley beneath was still the haunt of floating mists; at one moment there was a bewitching glimpse up Newlands Vale, at another we saw the silver moonlight streaming across Lake Bassenthwaite. Yet after our ramble of some twenty-six miles we were loath to go indoors, and first repaired to Friar’s Crag, where perchance the cloud might rive apart and let us see Derwent Water in all its moonlit unearthly beauty, with its wooded islets floating like bits of paradise upon its tranquil bosom.

The clouds did open while we stood there. Words cannot convey what we saw.