To the rambler upon these hills few things are so attractive, next to the hills themselves, as the glimpses which he gains into the ways of the non-human people that have their homes there. It thrills us to remember that the mountains, lonely though we call them, have for centuries on centuries had their own populous dramas of life and death, and that their rocky tenements were inhabited, in some cases down to comparatively modern times, by the bear, the wolf, the boar, the wild cat, and other hardy outlaws that now exist but in a name or a tradition; but while we must lament the loss of such peaceful animals as the beaver, spoken of by Giraldus Cambrensis as still resident on one Welsh stream in the twelfth century, And it is one of the compensating advantages of the destruction of the greater “game” that the mountains are no longer a hunting-place. You may walk where you will, round Snowdon or round Scafell, without the fear of being turned back, as so often happens in the Scotch highlands, by the nuisance of game-preserving; nor will your own feelings be harassed by the spectacle of a troop of deer-stalkers, or other blood-sportsmen intent on “killing something.” There is, of course, fishing in plenty, but that, as far as I have watched it in these upland places, is an exercise rather of faith and imagination than of the red right hand; at any rate one seldom sees the fisherman catch anything, and the “fool with a gun” is now as rare a sight as the rare birds whom his forerunners have “dropped”—to use that telling expression of the game-keepers. Fox-hunting on foot goes on to some extent in the winter months; but the need of killing these mischievous pilferers is here a reality, and not, as in fashionable hunting-counties, a sham, and we may rightly wish to see the fox exterminated as the wolf has been—a far humaner and more rational course than that of “preserving” him to be tortured by huntsmen. The otter-worry, that very mean form of cruelty, is carried on in the lower valleys of a few mountain districts, where the pools are large and deep, but climbers Here, then, is another goodly feature of mountaineering, that, as one of its accomplished masters, Mr. Owen Glynne Jones, observed, it “does not claim the sacrifice of beasts and fishes.” The craft of climbing is a fine physical training which, as a school of manliness and self-reliance, immeasurably transcends the wretched amateur butchery that masquerades as “sport.” “The mountaineer,” says Reclus, “experiences, like the huntsman, the delight of conquest after toil, yet he enjoys the pleasure all the more, in that he has risked none but his own life; he has kept his hands unstained.” In the absence of the larger kinds of wild animals that have gone down under the stress of what we call civilization, it is to the mountain birds that we first turn with interest. We think at once of the golden eagle, in regions where the names of so many cliffs recall his former sovereignty; and those who have seen the great bird, as I have, flying in freedom among the mountains of Skye, and, as happened on one occasion I recall, mobbed by dwarfish-looking ravens, as a kestrel is mobbed by sparrows, on the shores of Loch Coruisk, until he sailed off on wide wings across the corrie, cannot but regret that he is no longer known in his traditional haunts on Snowdon, or on his famous crag in Borrowdale. But when we read in old books of travel, such as West’s I was told by a sheep-farmer in Scotland, who had trapped or shot over a score of these feathered freebooters, that for an eagle to carry off a plump lamb from the pastures there is need of a freshening breeze to lift the mighty wings; he had seen cases when, in dull listless weather, the bird was unable to rise with its quarry, and on the approach of the shepherd was obliged to abandon it and flap reluctantly away. A lady who had been pained to see a golden eagle “for sale,” once asked me whether, in the event of her ransoming the captive, it would be possible to set him at liberty on some mountain height, and for a time I was rather dazzled by the idea of releasing the imperial bird from the top of Snowdon or Scafell, or, if the companionship of other eagles was desired, from some far northern peak; but on my consulting a well-known ornithologist he assured me that the eagle, Eagles, then, we have none in our Welsh and English mountains, and the kite having now been reduced to so poor a remnant as to be numbered with the lost British birds, we turn perforce to the buzzard and the peregrine as the two most noteworthy representatives of the family of the Falcons. The fiery-hearted peregrine, or “falcon-hawk,” as the dalesmen call him, still breeds on certain rocky ramparts, whence he can overlook the valleys and dart forth unerringly on any passing prey. An eye-witness once described to me how a falcon, having struck down one of two pigeons in a field at the head of Langdale, and being scared from his victim by some harvesters who saw the chase, rose instantly and was off at lightning speed after the other pigeon over the ridge of Bowfell! We look in vain to the buzzard for such indomitable energies; yet it is a grand sight to watch him sailing aloft in leisurely circles, or hanging poised, as he sometimes does, off the edge of some broken escarpment, so near that you can see his barred feathers and quickly glancing eye. On a misty day in rounding a sharp headland, I have sometimes come suddenly The raven, who, in default of the eagle, divides with the buzzard the empire of the crags is, perhaps, the most interesting bird that now claims our attention; and robber though he is, we are always glad to hear his deep “kronk,” or his wild dog-like bark, before the black form is seen skirting the edge of the precipice or winging straight across the glen. It is somewhat strange that in spite of the persecution of shepherds, the cupidity of collectors, and the inroads of rock-climbers, so large a bird can still find undisturbed breeding-places, and maintain his numbers as well as he does among our British hills; but I think the case of the raven, as far as these districts are concerned, is hardly so desperate as ornithologists give us to understand. To walk for several hours among the Carnarvonshire or the Cumberland mountains without evidence of ravens, is in my experience rather unusual, and at times one may see them there in great It is astonishing how near this wary outlaw will approach to dwelling-houses in the early summer mornings before mankind is on the stir. It so happened that from the cottage at Capel Curig where I used to stay, I could see a section of the hillside above as I lay in bed, and on two successive mornings I was puzzled by what seemed to be a concourse of large fowls hopping and squabbling, a few hundred yards from my window, round some object on the bank. On further investigation I found this object to be the carcase of a sheep, and the combatants to be hungry ravens “on the grab.” But there are other and more cheery singers in the mountain choir. In the early summer, when the bird-life of these upland valleys is at its prime, two voices above all others are resonant along the Welsh hillsides, those of the cuckoo and the curlew, who fill the clear air with their clear melody the whole of the long June day, and not a little of the night. There are, perhaps, few sounds in wild nature more fascinating than the curlew’s call, starting, as it does, with its strange single note, and gradually rising and breaking into what seems Familiar friends, also, are the ring-ousel, or, as some call him, the rock-ousel, and the wheatear; the one as fussy and loquacious as his lowland cousin, the blackbird (thanks to his outcry, I have sometimes found his nest on a ledge of steep heather-covered rock, as under the northern front of Tryfan); the other flitting silent and watchful, with quick jerky movements, from stone to stone, or along the grey wall on the mountain. These with the ever-welcome meadow-pipit, are rarely absent from the hillside. Of the river birds there is none that has so strong a hold on the affections of the mountaineer as the water-ousel, delightful little sprite of the tumbling becks and eddies, from which his very being seems inseparable. No writer with whom I am acquainted has paid a juster tribute to the many charms of the water-ousel than the author of The Mountains of California, whose chapter on the The beasts of the mountain, as viewed by the passing observer are, with one exception, less interesting, because less wild, than the birds; for the fox and the “mart” are seldom seen by the climber, who, in his eagerness to reach his goal, has no time to devote, as the naturalist would, to a patient watching of their haunts. The exception is the wild goat, which, strange to say, is not known as a British species by the majority of naturalists, though it has much more right to that distinction than the “wild” Chillingham cattle; for it is a fact that on some of the Welsh mountains as on some Scottish islands, there are still herds of goats which, if not indigenous (that claim, it seems, is disproved by their mixed colours and the shape of their horns), are yet living in a state of absolute freedom and wildness, full of courage and resource, and able to hold their own under hardships of climate which no domestic animal could endure, and there is little doubt that these herds, though descended from escaped animals, and reinforced from time to time by “strays” that have taken to the hills, are of very great antiquity. They used to be common, a century or less ago, in a number of craggy spots, such These wild Welsh goats must not be confused with the half-domesticated herds which it was the custom until about fifty years ago to keep on the hills as sheep are now kept. We are told by Cliffe in his Book of North Wales While ascending we heard much shouting, and barking of dogs, intermingled with piercing shrieks. Then we passed a gigantic snow-white billy-goat, with his legs tied, struggling at intervals convulsively, and uttering very shrill cries. Presently we came in sight of several men in a narrower part of the Pass, striving to capture another white billy-goat of greater size and even longer horns. The animal had taken refuge, after a long chase, on a very narrow ledge in a precipice, and apparently bid defiance to his pursuers. At last he bounded suddenly from a great height, and ran rapidly over broken rocks and heath for about six hundred yards, with the pack of dogs close at his heels, who ultimately brought him up, but were kept at bay by his horns. From the mountain goats we pass naturally to the mountain sheep, who, though nominally domesticated, are so little subject to human interference and live so great a portion of their lives at large upon the hills, that as compared with our dull southern breeds they may almost be regarded as wild animals. Very familiar to every one who has spent much time on the mountains is the sharp “sneeze” of the sheep as he gives warning to his fellows that a stranger is approaching. Writing of the Welsh sheep, half a century ago, Cliffe Since this was written, the extent of many pasture-lands has been lessened; but there are still places where the sheep have a whole mountain, or several mountains, to roam over, and live in a state of considerable freedom and liveliness. An old man who used to spend the summer months at the top of a high pass in the Lake District, where he sold refreshments to tourists, and slept in a little hut built right into the steep hillside, told me that his only discomfort arose from the noisy gambols of the sheep, who kept him awake by disporting themselves on his grassy roof after nightfall. Thus, like the lady in Locksley Hall, he must lie and ponder— In the dead unhappy night, and when the ram is on the roof. Imagine any one suffering in this manner from the frolics of our south-country muttons! The mountain lambs, especially, have a The sheep of the Welsh hills and the Cumbrian fells is a sort of connecting-link between Muir’s ovis montana and the silly creature of our meadows; but it must be admitted that he sadly lacks the marvellous climbing powers of his wilder relative, for when he ventures on the tempting ledges of turf that intersect the sheer precipices he sometimes shares the fate of the “meek mountain lamb” in Scott’s “Helvellyn.” I once saw an unfortunate “cragbound” sheep on a narrow and very dangerous terrace that overhangs the great eastern verge of If the mountain sheep must be deemed half wild, can less be said of that lean, gaunt, hungry, savage, but highly intelligent animal, the sheep-dog of Cumberland or Wales? It is one thing to see these “friends of man” in their educated capacity, collecting or dispersing the sheep under their owner’s vociferous bidding; it is quite another thing to see them gorging ravenously on a carrion sheep, and slinking off with wolfish demeanour when disturbed. Historians may tell us that “the last wolf” was killed among these mountains some centuries back; but we make bold to doubt that assertion when surrounded by half a dozen bristling “Gelerts” in the wilds of Wales, for it would then seem that not a little of the character of canis lupus has survived in domestication. For my part, I would rather meet a Welsh bull on an open grass-slope than a I have incidentally mentioned the bull; and who that has walked much in Carnarvonshire or Merioneth will be so pedantic as to deny the bull his place among the fauna of these districts? Theoretically, no doubt, he must be classed with the domestic; but in practice there are times when his domesticity is apt to be doubted by the wayfarer, and when even the cheery assurances of the Welsh herdsman (if within hail) that “she will do nothing to you,” leave much to be desired. Turned out in early summer on the roadways and hill-slopes, with that national disregard for Saxon weaknesses which has characterized the Cymry from of old, the black bulls of these hilly regions are an element that has to be In some of the valleys round Snowdon there is a strange-looking breed of black and white Scandinavian cattle, whose appearance at close quarters on a dark night is rather eerie, because only the white part of each animal is easily visible, and the traveller has the spectacle of a detached head, or shoulder, or hind-quarter, as the case may be, confronting him through the gloom. As a rule, it is only in spells of great heat, such as occasionally descend upon the mountains, that the bulls are really dangerous, and then they are seldom approached, even by the herdsman, without the aid of dogs. It is said that the most ominous symptom on the We see, then, that the Cambrian and Cumbrian hills, though far less richly populated than they were some centuries back, have yet no little interest to offer us in the races of non-human peoples, wild or half-wild, that inhabit them—races whose life is much more closely intertwined with the life of the mountain itself, and more responsive to its varying moods |