The English Lakes :: CHAPTER VII THE MOODS OF WASTWATER

CHAPTER VII THE MOODS OF WASTWATER

I never think of Wastwater without recalling some exciting hours—Wastwater surrounded by crag-set mountains and wide bouldery moorlands where foxes rule wild and strong. Under Tommie Dobson, that genius among fell-land huntsmen, a pack of wiry hounds has been raised in the bordering dales. In pursuit ruthless, untiring, determined; a chase from dawn to night, over country bristling with difficulties, is no unusual thing to them. Screes, miles of frittering mountain rampart, Yewbarrow, ridged like a Napoleon’s hat, Scawfells, impending over great piles of fragments, Gable; about these are benks and earths and borrans innumerable. Never a season do they fail the hunt; never do they fail for redskins to plunder flock and poultry roost. Then the wilds to Ennerdale—I had climbed the slope of Gable before the meet at dawn on a spring day, the crisp air became full of music—what finer sounds than those from a foxhound’s throat!—the turf was springy and dry, the sky flecked with high-sailing clouds. To climb the rocky terraces was delightful; to hunt—the exhilaration needs experience, it is beyond my words to describe. No pink coat was in the knot of men below; and a follower on horseback is seldom seen at a meet by Wastwater. Hounds unkennelled as they left the short lane from the inn, and soon above the babble of eager questers rose the clear peal of a true find. To one line gathered the pack, and away! Not often does Reynard give so good a chance. Over the tall drystone walls surged the hounds, at first in a compact bunch, then, as pace began to tell, dribbling out into a line. Out of the fields, and into the intakes of Mosedale; and ever higher rose the note of the chase, ever smarter the gliding forward of the clan. A check! From Gable’s lofty flank I saw hounds halt at a dark grey patch of stones, circle it almost in silence. Reynard has gone aground; the huntsmen and the fleeter followers come up. The scent drew the pack in and out, over wall and beck, through dead bracken and crackling heather, three or four good miles, but the huntsman, judging the true route, reached the borran in less than a mile. The hounds called away, terriers are put “in” and possibly will have Reynard out ere long. Nowhere but in the fells are terriers really used after foxes—nowhere else, the dalesmen proudly say, are dogs capable of doing such work. After a considerable delay two white dots stray out on to the dark grey stones—Reynard has been killed in the dark recesses.

A FELL FOX-HUNT, HEAD OF ESKDALE AND SCAWFELL

The sun is now high, the cloud flecks are gone, the air has become warm. Long ago foxes ceased to be afoot, and hours of careful work by huntsman and hounds may be necessary to find another fair scent. But even the pattern of all wiliness, like the human votaries at his shrine, sometimes overreaches himself. After a tedious march it is refreshing to hear hounds speak to a piping line. Reynard, lying out in a pile of boulders, has heard the coming pack. He steals away—too late, for a keen-sighted dalesman has viewed him away. Ten minutes of frenzied rushing, and the fox is reached. Ruby in the van seizes him, and over go both at the impact. The hound, aged but plucky, loses his grip and Reynard is free again; down the scree, in the very access of terror, the redskin flies, but with a couple of bounds Chorister has him fast. The iron jaws crunch into the fox’s spine, and though together they roll near twenty yards the grip never falters. There is no “worry” at the death; the hounds, now that their enemy is dead, take little further notice of him. Ofttimes the death is compassed a mile away from the nearest follower, but occasionally a fair number view the finish. And to do this you may have to come pell mell down some rotten “rake.” We saw hounds stream over a patch of snow on a near-by hill: a dalesman pointed out Reynard dead beat a hundred yards in front. “The Gate,” called some one, “who’s going down?” Six of us rushed for the head of that precipitous scree-shoot. The angle of descent was terrible, but, hunting mad, we leapt and slid, stumbled and jolted down. A thousand feet plumb drop, with a hail of loose stones roaring behind us. The rake-foot was narrow, between perpendicular rocks, and in single file we raced down. No one tried to halt; if it were thought of, the gathering pelt of stones decided in favour of forward. Shades of Silver Howe! In the madness of the guide-race you never saw the like of this. But after five minutes of real, tearing life—oh! it’s good to have lived through such a time!—we were running down the smoother grass. The hounds were probably quite close by—running mute for the death—and across the roaring, flooded beck within a score yards came the fox. We halted in silence—back up, tongue lolling, moving stiffly and with evident pain, he was the scourge of the fells, but a respected foe at that. Thrice had he been chased far, now came for him the end. Two outstripping hounds shot across a cove which was bank-high in snow, leapt at him, and all was over.

Wastwater, its bed hewn and filled by Almighty power in the beginning to contrast the silvern temporalities of a level mere with the solid, silent, rugged eternities of rock around. There is always some pleasure to the hale of body and mind in climbing from Wastwater, whether by pony-track, mountain-path, or dangerous puzzle route up the cliffs. In early October I had to cross to Wastwater from Keswick. In the golden glory of afternoon we passed up Borrowdale. One side the glen sloomed in dying bronze of bracken, the other was grey with nude birches below, chocolate with heather above. We left the main road and passed into the desolate mountain land. As the sun declined, clouds, at first mackerel but now dull and heavy with rain and night, floated majestically from behind the western mountains. Shortly in a low cloud cornice Gable’s head was buried, and billow after billow of mist possessed the higher ground: at Rosthwaite the glow of day, here the portents of night and foul weather. “Fraternal Three” and the old wad-mine took but a moment’s attention, then away, up the narrow dell.

WASTWATER, FROM STRANDS

Night fast closed round. Our last look back barely showed the curve of Borrowdale. Gillercombe, scored by tremendous ravines, presided over a scene of almost indescribable wildness. The wind roared and boomed above, the steady drift of fine rain was in our faces. Hoarsely down its rugged bed the beck sang in accord. Grey light and dashing water, with gloom intense above and a rain-sodden world below, our path uncertain, picked out by boulders. Bogs of sphagnum, sponged a foot high with water, runnels where in summer are hollows filled with wee splinters, the rills all shouting becks, and the becks flooding torrents. Our boots full of water, wet to the thigh, we still squelched on. In a while we came to a narrow footbridge, and crossed the chief torrent. “Where is the path?” I knew not, nor cared. Swinging bogs were all about; a grisly light crept through the clouds in front: that showed the pass-head, and was my guide. Now, we stood within twenty yards of Stye Head Tarn—what a scene! Half invisible, a patch of wind-spurned waters, dark mountains sweeping upward, cloven by black ghylls, whitish beards of cloud stealthily moving along and hiding the higher ground in ghostly embrace. The sounds—the tongues of many waters, and the night wind weirding among crags and crannies. Ten minutes more, our path in a long curve swept down the rock-shelves toward the dale. What a gulf of gloom, the waterfalls roaring and possessing the night! Take care, take care, the way is full of stumbling-blocks, of pitfalls; to the right is steep rock, to the left a precipice. Over it—crane your neck and see if foothold is visible beneath. Such is Stye Head Pass at night.

WASTWATER AND SCAWFELL

We reach the scree where the route is safer, but at the zig-zags more than once overshoot the path. The clouds apparently are densest near the mountains, for beyond the rock-girt valley some brighter clouds render darkness almost visible. There is a dream of a grey Wastwater, a mirage of something not chaos beyond. A spark of light shows where the hotel lies, but it is far away. Some twenty minutes from the pass-head we find grass beneath our feet. Looking backward, there is a walpurgis of grey shadow and black night. Now the path is easier and we walk more rapidly, though frequently stumbles remind us that the path is far from smooth. The light—from hospitable windows—is nearing perceptibly. Now, in front, is a darker mass—the yew-trees crowding round a tiny House of God, shielding it by their tough green limbs from the storms. We were walking quietly in the narrow lane thinking of the gloom on all things made, when a white shadow beyond that of the dale-church arrested us. What is it? Memory hasted back a week to that most terrible disaster in the annals of Lakeland rock-climbing—the accident on the Scawfell Pillar. Four fine young men were killed, and three are laid here. A heap of white flowers, like a pall of mountain snow, masks the grave. Sadly impressive is the scene; the white wilting flowers represent fitly the brief human span of life—to-day we are, to-morrow we are not, thus is the will of God: the dense green yew-trees symbolise death, the time-long end of man. But look higher, I felt—around. “O death, where is thy sting?” for, though the mists of night bewilder, great rock-ribs are rising upward, higher, ever higher, till earth and heaven meet. And the yew of death will moulder by the kirkgarth, but the mountains must stand fast to prove eternity—immeasurable, infinite.

Wastwater, its shores treeless and forlorn, its waters rippling against their shingly bays, with mountains beyond and around, curtains of rock and ribbons of scree. In the cool days of spring the mountains are delightful, but sometimes there is a sudden revulsion to winter. A shade sweeps from nor’east, and behold a squall plastering all with snow, a gale shrieking around, and the temperature tumbling to zero. Such mischances apart, the bracing air makes a new creature of one after the fogs of winter, and you simply stroll up the ascents. So much has been written of the mountain-climbing around Wastwater that to infuse romance, to say any new thing, is difficult. Steep ghylls there are to ascend, loose bands of scree to pass, bogs varying in depth according to weather. Here a rushing rivulet to ford, there, winding beneath crazy rock fragments, the path hangs on the brink of a deep ravine; collar work up five hundred feet of slippery grass, and splendid poising exercise over beds of boulders. When winter holds sway and a white garb hides the bloom of meadows and hillsides, Wastwater is a very home of loneliness. Its surface is no home for the wildfowl from northward: a wastewater it is to them and not worth a minute of the foody, oozy sands of Irt and Esk, seven miles away. Loneliness and silence. When the babel of the flock in the intakes ceases to the ear, the absence of all sound will depress the liveliest soul. The air, chill and cutting, goes soundlessly by; the lake broods in leaden, stirless gloom. There is no sound of tinkling rivulets; the raven’s croak, the curlew’s wild shriek, are no longer heard; the plover, the heron, and the birds of the hedgerow have flown to less sombre regions. When the stars are mirrored in the steely blue water and the moon throws shafts of glory across the mountain barrier, the silence is more crushing. One side the dale is in shadow; frost spangles give to the other an ethereal, unreal illume. Gable and the Scawfells are snowbound where on ledge and scree snow can lie; the rocks, through which, from the mountain’s heart, hidden springs are driven, are sheathed with ice. Day after day, the deadness of living nature seems to increase; day after day, the unknowable mysteries of the mountains seem to deepen. The loudest voice seems hushed; the most fervid imagination is consciously dwarfed. Then the weather changes; the air turns raw and damp, and day seemingly forgets Wastwater. Silent, implacable, falls the rain. Down almost to the water trail the ragged cloud-beards—they choke day from the low land. Up the mountains—he is a hardy wight who dares to be there. Half-molten snowdrifts, torrents roaring, cascading from unseen above to invisible below, gouts of water cleaving through the mistwreaths. But seldom does such a wanderer brave the elements long. Turgid torrents and close-enwrapping fogs charm no one. Indoors the fires burn bright; save for a brief space about noon, when a sickly lightening proclaims day’s climax and glory, the lamps are hardly out. To the gloom of the clouded sky is added the great shadows of close-hemming mountains; there are houses among the fells on which for three months of the year the sun never shines.

WASTDALEHEAD AND GREAT GABLE
Towards evening in autumn

Wastwater, and the Screes. Three miles of buttresses crumbling down in fan-shaped beds of ruin. It is grand to pace the opposite shore and watch the play of light and shade on the rugged mountainside. Streaked with rich brown are some of the yawning gullies: up there are stores of ruddle or native iron. Soft and soluble as mud, the substance once had a value as providing an indelible mark for sheep. The shepherd lads from distant dales came here to collect it—for a premium of sixpence per pound from their masters. On the brink and halfway down the face of the shivery rocks are the little veins of ruddle found. A steady step and a firm nerve had the lads who dared such labour, for a misstep might split their foothold to pieces and throw them far down the ravines. We are told that many lives were lost in the pursuit of ruddle: compared with it, modern rock-climbing, with the skilfully used safeguards, is safe, though of course far more arduous. The climber of to-day chooses a sound crag for his work: the ruddle-gatherer could only work among the loosest, craziest ground.

The best way to see the Screes is to take a boat and row close to them. High above your head, a great rampart of rock, scored since the world began with the cabalistic record of frost and storm, hides the sky. Somewhere betwixt the crags and lake, following the smoothest route, is a rough path. In and out of parks of huge boulders (many, geologists say, still sliding downwards at speeds varying from slothful inches to a bustling six feet per annum), the track threads, affording a grand though tiring walk. After frost there is danger in approaching some of the crags. Huge breasts of stone are so finely hung that the ice wedging their crannies rends them as surely as gunpowder. There have been some tremendous rockfalls in the Screes. A century ago one of the sights of Wastwater was a lofty fragment to which an uncouth imagination gave the name of Wilson’s Horse. For long the vicinity had been shunned: pieces of rock were for ever disintegrating from the mass. Then, after a winter grim with frost and snow, came the final catastrophe. At dead of night was heard the roar of falling rock, and at daybreak the Horse had disappeared. Judging from the splintery gulf whence the Horse fell, “What a splash it must have made!” interjected one as we scrambled about the place. It is said that a twenty-foot wave passed north and south after the rock struck the water.

WASTWATER SCREES

Wastwater, the home of many shepherds. As you scramble their flocks are ever around you. And from among desolate-looking rocks, between beds of lichened boulders, they obtain sustenance. There is a tuft of grass just by that patch of parsley fern; a little fringe of soft green nestles beneath that boulder; a skin of living verdure finds root where the scree lies fine as dust. For these wisps of grass the hardy Herdwicks assiduously search, and on such meagre fare they thrive. Our sheep are small in size compared with those of the lowlands but more robust, and so intelligent that no dweller in the mountain-land can understand that cant phrase “a silly sheep.” There are other animals with far less resource or real initiative when faced by danger. The life of the mountain shepherd possesses little of Arcadian joy and pastoral romance. The stress of winter when storm sweeps down from the Gable and the air is riotous with snow, the terrible “clash” at lambing-time when the weather turns wet for weeks, militate against such idylls as are fancied in brighter lands. So ruthless is fact in its war with poetic vapourings that even the glories of the shepherd’s summer do not remain. Instead of the shepherd piping and watching the sheep with lambs by their sides streaming over green swelling hills, in the English mountain-land it is the season of the detested maggot. This cruel pest burrows through wool and skin into the living flesh beneath and devours that. It is almost too sickening to recall the piteous scenes of visible spines and ribs from which the flesh has been denuded; of sheep still living in the most awful agony. Nearly the worst characteristic of this terrible visitation is that a sheep when attacked generally turns recluse and wanders as far as possible from its fellows. Thus, when the shepherd should theoretically be at ease, he is really, ointment pot in hand, climbing about the roughest parts of his holding. Once, when wandering near Wastwater, I met a shepherd.

“Been salving?” I queried.

“Nay, been trying to find some to salve. I’ve a mind they’re somewhere in these ghylls, but I can’t come at ’em.”

“How many do you reckon there’ll be?”

“Mappen sebben or eight. I’m going to try this beck course.”

“Yes, do,” I said: “I think there’s a few up above.”

WASTDALEHEAD CHURCH
The smallest in the district—perhaps in England

Then I explained that from across the mere I had noticed a few white dots, and had entered into remarks thereon with one who through field glasses was scanning the great hillside. He could scarce believe that the small grey masses cluthering in the ghyll were sheep. “They’re far too still.” I admitted the mournful fact, also that they were much above the zone of grass, but added that they were “smitten by wicks.” The shepherd assured that this was the very ghyll, up we went. It was not long before we came to the lowest—I dare not say animal. So weak and emaciated was the living organism from ravages of the terrible maggot that the shepherd immediately kicked out its brain. “Can’t save it,” he muttered through set teeth. The next was not so far gone. The shepherd, with deft hands, cut away the clotted wool and speedily the cleansing ointment was at work. The plunging and baa-ing of the sheep showed that the cure was a “smarty” one. One by one the other sheep were found and remedies applied, so that the shepherd went back to the farm at rest.

Wastwater, haunt of the char and the botling, the latter a mysterious fish. Now and again he turned up, and his appearance spread dread through the country-side—what had not happened when last this hermit fish came ashore? Fever and agues were by some said to follow his occurrence, or trouble about heafage rights. But progressive science scared him from existence (the botling was ever a male) with his little hoard of lore. The fish was taken at the fall of the year in the little becks and among spawning trout. He was a powerful fellow, differing chiefly from his associates in greater size and thickness, and in the manner in which his under jaw turned up and was hooked. In weight the botling ranged from four to twelve pounds. One killed by leister, or fish spear, was so thick that its girth was in excess of its length by four inches. In colour and marking the botling resembled the ordinary lake trout, the brown spots on its back being only proportionately larger. Probably it was only a local variation of Salmo ferox (the great lake trout); it might possibly have been a hybrid fish. At any rate, here the argument must be left: for half a century the botling has not been heard of—his train of woe, however, has not been so considerate.

NEARING THE TOP OF STYHEAD PASS, WASTDALE

Like our other lakes, Wastwater is most fishable when a faint breeze ruffles its waters—for the benefit of the visitor-angler, the coch y bondhu and Broughton Point are the best general flies, with red hackle during the summer. There is little sport with the char: the lake-bed does not permit netting, and the fish are not present in sufficient numbers to encourage the use of the plumb-line. One of my old acquaintance was wont to walk from Langdale over the mountains to fish here, in the days of the now proscribed lath. Poor old Tom, it needs a vivid imagination to picture thy age-wrung frame climbing steep Rossett Ghyll, to think of thy dim old eyes as alert enough to seek out the path as in semi-darkness thou wandered among bogs and benks, screes and boulders. Still more difficult is it to see thee bending over the lead-weighted board with its twin lines and their droppers of gut, fly, and barb, keen to get the instrument on its journey. In one of the coves where purls down a rivulet, the lath is launched; the faint current carries it outward till the breeze ruffling the lake catches its upturned edge. Twenty yards out, where the lake sheers down to its great depth, fish are lying, taking what food air and stream drift to them. Slowly the lath sails outward, Tom unwinding further line as required. The board is now, thinks Tom, beyond the shoal, and the droppers should be presenting their temptations to the fish. Its movement is therefore checked, and the linesman waits for the fish to bite. Tom’s right hand after a while draws one end of the lath nearer, the breeze catches it and it floats sidewise. To the right is a few yards of water from which Tom has previously taken good fish. In an hour he rises from the shadows, and draws the board slowly to land. At first the lines come steadily enough, and are coiled neatly; then there is greater resistance. The right line jerks about in all directions: here comes a big trout. A faint ruffle breaks from a back fin just beneath the surface, there is a little wimple as the fish sinks down again. Gently, gently Tom draws in line. Now there is a brisk curl quite close to his feet near the rocks, a few splashes, and Tom is handling a half-pounder. So strong was the tackle used for lath-fishing that no delicate precision, little fine “play,” was requisite. Poor old Tom! Hadst thou then a taste for the picturesque, what lovely memories thou must be revelling in now when in age thine eye to outward things grows dim! Nights by lovely mountain tarns, when the northward light made the water glow like steel, when the great ribs of the mountains seemed in their nakedness to support the dome of night. Star-spangled skies, and the soft mists of summer by the lake-shore when everything droned to rest. The adventure Tom remembers best is of Wastwater. A keeper had suspected lathing on the western shore, and secreted himself to watch. Tom came over from Langdale, and near Yewbarrow made ready his lines. The board floating out attracted the keeper’s attention. He was mounted, and rode as fast as he could to cut off the poacher. Tom heard the thud of hooves on the soft grass, threw his lines into the mere, and made up the hillside as fast as he could run. A few score yards the horseman pursued, but the poacher managed to cross a deep but narrow gully which the keeper’s pony could not leap. Then, as Tom quaintly remarks, “He thought he hed hed enew on’t, and turned back to the lake. But I got my lines and board in spite of all. Aye, and there was about twenty pounds of fish on ’em.”

WASTDALEHEAD, WASTWATER

Wastwater—its memories are quite innumerable. On cycle the western shore is not difficult. The road undulates, but its surface is fair. It was a warm afternoon; rain had fallen during the previous night, but bright sunshine and sweeping breeze had dried up the exposed portions of the road, though under the trees it was still muddy. We started from Santon Bridge, a sweet hamlet in the gorge of the Irt, not usually found by those whose faces are toward Wastwater. For a couple of miles the road was up, up, and the hills were long; then down, down, down, and the descents were merry. And the Screes rose loftier in front, and looked more and more broken. Soon the level blue of Wastwater comes in sight over larch-tops. Then, as we pedal into a beech avenue, the full view is lost, but we see a succession of entrancing vistas: narrow shafts of meadow and woodland, of water and upspringing screes, framed in by dainty sprays of copper foliage. Through the tunnel of overhanging boughs is a glimpse of open moor and of distant fell. The road declines and our speed increases. To northward we see almost the full length of the mere; the faint breeze is urging the water to gayest laughter. The Screes, with their rainbow hues of native coal and iron, of green slate and brown conglomerate, are opposite. The afternoon sun is playing about their gullies: in some we see long, thin cascades, but between the cliffs fringing other ravines is a straight, heavy shadow. In there, unseen by the sun, the water jets and sprays in leaden glories; no rainbow dances in the soft white veils; dank, slimy cave-ferns grow in plenty.

Our road now passes into the wild moorland—terrace after terrace of hillocks we wind through, keeping near the lake’s level. The feature in this approach to Wastwater head is Yewbarrow. Seen from other points this seems rather tame, but from here it is impressive, commanding the whole view. The lake is still waving under the influence of the breeze; green, green and gold are the hillsides with grass and bracken. Among the stones the staghorn moss threads, sending up club-like spikes in profusion; every boulder is fringed with parsley fern. Yewbarrow, always changing shape, now appears as if cloven by a chasm from the great mass of mountains, and the name of the chasm is Bowderdale. There is heather by the roadside now, its tufts perfect masses of bloom, and the broom’s yellow glory is not wanting. In half a mile we leave the desolation of rock and grass—here are trees and even a few pieces of hedges, rowan and hawthorn, with a few scrubby oaks. The level plain of Wastdale head appears in front; we coast round guardian Yewbarrow, pass cottage and farm as far as the road serves, then push our machines to the church of the dale. Now the weather changes. The brilliant sunshine suddenly glooms and dies away. I look up to Great Gable, weather oracle of the glen—and am surprised. Half an hour ago a fluffy cloud seemed resting on it, but now a dark mass of vapour, distended with wind and bearded with unshed rain, has taken its place. And over the pass from Ennerdale on the left, and through the gully from Borrowdale on the right, the hosts of storm cloud are boiling. A contrary gust whispers a shrill warning; we seek shelter at once, but with a seething and a roar the storm is upon us, lashing rain-lines in our faces. Fifty yards away the vicar’s house offers shelter—we are not acquaintances, but—— In three minutes we are in his kitchen, looking out toward the glen of Mosedale. At first nothing more is visible than a grey mass of whirling rain, then, for a summer storm is but brief, again the flanks of the nearer fells come in sight. The pall passes rapidly, and the sunshine is pouring over the spine of Yewbarrow before the last rush of rain has streamed down the hospitable window. Ere long, the glen is again rejoicing in sunshine; the grass sparkles with fairy gems, the streaming crags are touched into shields of silver, the hoary crown of Gable seems to brighten as though the new spirit of life below made even it, the monarch, rejoice.

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