[2]Rambles among the Mountains, Valleys, and Solitudes of Wales, by J. H. Cliffe, 1860.
[3] “The simple people who till the soil of Westmorland and Cumberland cannot view in any other light than that of childish ‘laking’ the migrating propensities of all the great people of the south who annually come up like shoals of herrings from their own fertile pastures to the rocky grounds of the north.”—De Quincey.
[4] The very word “to climb” is beginning to be appropriated by the gymnasts, in whose records we find mention of meetings with “non-climbing parties” at the summits. Scott’s verse, “I climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn,” will evidently have to be rewritten.
[5] See the well-known lines in Scott’s “Helvellyn”:
“Dark green was that spot mid the brown mountain-heather,
Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretched in decay.”
[7] “I suppose that I feel the same awe when on their summits that many do on entering a church. To see what kind of earth that is on which you have a house and garden somewhere, perchance! It is equal to a lapse of many years. If you have been to the top of Mount Washington, let me ask, what did you find there? Going up there and being blown on is nothing. We never do much climbing while we are there, but we eat our luncheon, etc., very much as at home. It is after we get home that we really go over the mountain, if ever. What did the mountain say? What did the mountain do?”—Thoreau.
[8] Captain Cameron, of Glen Brittle House, Isle of Skye.
[9] The expression was used in E. D. Clarke’s Tour through Wales, 1791.
[10] The word “glidder” is given in the English Dialect Dictionary as meaning a loose stone. Cf. the line in Scott’s “Shepherd’s Tale”: “Among the glidders grey.”
[11] “I ken the place, as mony does, in fair daylight, but how to find it by moonshine, amang sae mony crags and stanes, as like to each other as the collier to the deil, is mair than I can tell.”—Heart of Midlothian.
[12] A proof of the sentiment attaching to Snowdon may be found in the number of counties which claim to have a distant view of it from their own highest points; we are told, for example, that it can be seen from the Worcestershire Beacon, at Malvern, across nearly a hundred miles of hill and plain. From what I have been able to discern of the Welsh heights as viewed from the hills of Shropshire, at a range of about fifty or sixty miles, I suspect that “Snowdon” must often be understood as a generic term, and that outlying summits such as the Arenig Fawr, near Bala, sometimes do duty for their chief.
[13]Description of the Scenery of the Lakes, 1823.
[15] See Climbing in the British Isles, by W. P. Haskett Smith, i. 86.
[16] Cf. the name of the well-known Nant Ffrancon, meaning “the Valley of the Beavers.”
[17] W. Gilpin’s Observations on the Mountains of Cumberland, 1786.
[18] See an interesting article on “Wild Goats in Wales,” in Country Life Illustrated, March 2, 1901. Also Mr. J. G. Millais’ British Mammals, iii. 213.
[19] “Probably these crests of the earth are for the most part of one colour in all lands, that grey colour of antiquity which Nature loves; colour of unpainted wood, weather-stain, time-stain; not glaring nor gaudy; the colour of all roofs, the colour of things that endure.”—Thoreau, Journal, x. 452.
[20] For a description of the flowers of the fells, I may be permitted, to refer the reader to my book The Call of the Wildflower, which contains chapters on the flora of Snowdonia and Helvellyn.
[22] In the good old days it must have been a practice to build privies actually over small streams, as may be seen from ruins near disused cottages in Wales and Cumberland.
[23] There is an English branch of the League for the Preservation of Swiss Scenery, which has powerful support. Does not charity in this, as in other matters, begin at home?
