HUMANITARIANISM is not merely an expression of sympathy with pain: it is a protest against all tyranny and desecration, whether such wrong be done by the infliction of suffering on sentient beings, or by the Vandalism which can ruthlessly destroy the natural grace of the earth. It is in man’s dealings with the mountains, where, owing to the untameable wildness of the scenery, any injury is certain to be irreparable, that the marks of the modern Vandal are most clearly seen.

It so happens that as I have known the mountains of Carnarvonshire and Cumberland rather intimately for many years, the process of spoliation which, as ElisÉe Reclus has remarked, is a characteristic of barbarism, has been there forced on my attention. It is close on half a century since I was introduced to some of the wildest mountains of North Wales by that muscular bishop, Dr. G. A. Selwyn, of whom I have spoken in an earlier chapter, when, as tutor to his nephew, I was one of an episcopal party that went on a summer holiday from Lichfield to Penmaenmawr. There the bishop relaxed very genially from the austere dignities of his Palace: and having procured an Ordnance map, was not only taken with a desire to find his way across the heights to Llyn-an-Afon, a tarn which nestles under the front of the great range of Carnedd Llewelyn, but insisted on being accompanied by his nephew and his nephew’s tutor. Mountaineering, as I afterwards saw, could not have been one of Dr. Selwyn’s many accomplishments; for we had to make more than one expedition before we set eyes on the lake, and in the course of our first walk he slipped on a steep ridge and put his thumb out of joint, to the secret amusement, I had reason to fear, of my pupil, who, greatly disliking these forced marches into the wilderness, regarded the accident as a nemesis on an uncle’s despotism. But to me the experience of those bleak uplands was invaluable, for it was the beginning of a love of mountains, both Cambrian and Cumbrian, which led me to return to them again and again, until I had paid over a hundred visits to their chief summits. Thus I could not fail to note, now in the one district, now in the other, how the hand of the desecrator had been busy.

Recent discussions in the press on the subject of the proposed Sty Head motor-road have been useful in two ways: first, they called forth so strong and general an expression of opinion against that ill-advised project, as to render its realization extremely unlikely for a long time to come; and secondly, they drew attention to the wider and deeper under-lying question of the preservation of British mountain scenery against Vandalism of various kinds. The attempt on the Sty Head was in itself a significant object-lesson in the dangers by which our mountain “sanctuaries” are beset. A hundred and fifty years ago the poet Gray could write thus of the hamlet of Seathwaite, where the famous Pass has its entrance on the Borrowdale side:

If the mountains held that belief, it was they, not the dalesmen, who were the innocents, for the little path has been found passable at every season of the year; and Mr. G. D. Abraham, himself a distinguished climber, and a native of the district, was so willing to reveal the mountain mysteries as to plead in his book on Motor Ways in Lakeland for the construction of a highroad from the very point where all farther access used to be barred. “The quaint little old-world hamlet,” he said, “will doubtless recover its glory of former days when the highway over Sty Head Pass becomes an accomplished fact.”

The love of mountains, itself a growth of modern times, has in fact brought with it a peril which did not exist before; it has opened the gateway and pointed the path to the shrine; but where the worshipper enters, what if the destroyer enters too? What if the pilgrim is close followed by the prospector?

Some years ago Mr. C. P. Trevelyan, M.P., introduced an “Access to Mountains Bill,” which while safeguarding the interests of land-owners, would have permitted pedestrians to indulge their love of highland scenery by making their way to the summits of uncultivated mountain or moorland. All nature-lovers must desire that such a measure may become law; and it might be hoped that landlords themselves would not persist in opposing it, for consideration should show them that it is impossible permanently to exclude the people from the hilltops of their native land. Even now, since it is the difficult and the forbidden which attract, there is a certain relish in the attempted ascent of those heights which in the landlord’s sense (not the climber’s) are still “inaccessible”—just as the cragsmen find a pleasure in striving to surmount the obstacles of rock-face or gully. Who has not longed to cross the lofty frontier into some deer-stalking or grouse-shooting Thibet, where, beyond the familiar lying sign-post stating that “trespassers will be prosecuted,” all is vagueness and mystery? What mountain-lover has not at times sought to snatch an “access to mountains” where access was denied?

I still recall the zest of a raid, albeit unsuccessful, on one of the summits of the Grampians, when our small party of climbers, starting from Aviemore, and passing the heathery shores of Loch-an-Eilan, fell in near “the Argyle Stone” with a number of deer-stalkers, who groaned aloud in their fury when they heard by what route we had ascended, and insisted on our going down to Kincraig. We had spoiled their day’s sport, they told us; and we, while regretting to have done so, could not refrain from saying that they had equally spoiled ours. We were consoled, however, in some measure, during that inglorious descent, by the sight of an osprey, or fishing-eagle, hovering over the river Spey: doubtless the bird was one of a pair that for years haunted Loch-an-Eilan, until the cursed cupidity of egg-collectors drove them from almost their last breeding-place.

One of the most inaccessible heights in England at the present day is Kinderscout, the “Peak” of Derbyshire, a triangular plateau of heathery moorland, with rocky “edges” broken into fantastic turrets and “castles.” Here only do the Derbyshire hills show some true mountain characteristics; and the central position of the “Peak,” which is about twenty miles equidistant from Sheffield, Manchester, and Huddersfield, would seem to mark it as a unique playground for the dwellers in our great manufacturing towns. In reality, it is a terra incognita to all but a very few, a place not for workers to find health in, but for sportsmen to shoot grouse; and there is no spot in England which is guarded against intruders with more jealous care. I speak advisedly, for I once tried, with some friends, to “rush” the summit-ridge from the public path which crosses its western shoulders, only to be overtaken and turned back by some skilfully posted gamekeeper.[36] The loss to the public of a right of way over these moors, as over many similar places, is deplorable; and here, as elsewhere, the compromise that has been arrived at has been greatly to the landlord’s advantage, for while the grouse-shooter excludes the public from a vast area of moorland, the wayfarer finds himself limited to the narrowest of roundabout routes, and is insulted, as at Ashop Head, by a perfect plague of notice-boards threatening all the imaginary pains and penalties of the law for any divergence on to the hillside. Certainly an Access to Mountains Bill is urgently required.

But there is one thing which is even worse than too little access to mountains, and that is the concession of too much. It were heartily to be wished that such districts as those of the Lakes, Snowdonia, and others which might be named, had long ago been made inaccessible, in this sense, to the railway-lord, the company-promoter, and all the other Vandals who for commercial purposes would destroy the sanctitude of the hills. We have, in fact, to consider what sort of access we propose, for just as there is all the difference in the world between the admission of the public to see a grand piece of statuary, and the admission of the man who has a design to chip the statue’s nose, so we have to distinguish between those who come to the mountains to speculate on the beauties of Nature and those who come there to speculate in a baser sense. Access to mountains is in itself most desirable, but what if we end by having no mountains to approach? In this respect the Bill might be strengthened, by making it withhold from the Vandal the access which it would bestow on the mountaineer.

Already much that was of inestimable value has been lost. The Lake District has in this respect been more fortunate than some other localities, because, owing to the powerful sentiment aroused by the Lake poets, there is a considerable public opinion opposed to any act of desecration. For this we have to thank, in the first place, the great name of Wordsworth, and, next, the faithful band of defenders which has stood between the enterprising contractor and his prey, as in the case of the once threatened railway to Ambleside and Grasmere. But even in Lakeland no little damage has been done, as by the mining which has ruined the scenery of Coniston, and by the permission granted to Manchester to turn the once sylvan and secluded Thirlmere into a suburban tank—Thirlmere first, and now the ruin of Haweswater is to follow.

Mention has been made in an earlier part of this book of a visit which I paid to Coniston in the winter of 1878-79. It so happened that a spell of severe frost and cloudless skies had then turned the Lakeland mountains into a strange realm of enchantment, the rocks being fantastically coated with fronds and feathers of snow, and the streams and waterfalls frozen into glittering masses of ice. I was the only visitor in the place (it was before Mr. Harrison Riley’s arrival), and for several days I had been scrambling over the range of the Old Man mountain without meeting a human being, when one afternoon, on the shore of Levers Water, a solitary figure came suddenly round a buttress of the hill and stalked silently past me as if wrapped in thought. I knew at once that it was Ruskin, for what other inhabitant of Coniston would be on the fells at such a season?

A few days later, when I went to Brantwood with Harrison Riley, as I have described, Ruskin talked a good deal of his favourite mountain haunts, as he showed us his wild strawberry beds, and terraces on the hillside made like Swiss roads; also a small beck running through his grounds to the lake, which he said was never dry, and was as precious to him as a stream of pure gold. The Lake scenery, he said, almost compensated him for the loss of Switzerland, which he could not hope to see again; his feeling for it was one less of affection than of “veneration.” But the sunsets had been a disappointment to him, for the sky above the Old Man was often sullen and overclouded, and this he attributed to the poisonous influence of the copper mines.

At present the chief danger to the quietude and beauty of the Lake district seems to be the motor-craze, especially that form of it which has been called “the fascinating sport of hill-hunting,” a game which has turned the Kirkstone Pass into a place of terror, where noisy machines pant and snort up one side and scorch furiously down the other, and which is now craving new heights to conquer. If not on the Sty Head, why not make a motor-way of the old track from Langdale to Eskdale over the passes of Wrynose and Hardknott? Such was the “compromise” which some mountain-lovers unwisely suggested, forgetting, first, that even this surrender, though less deadly than that of the Sty Head, would involve the destruction of a wild and primitive tract, and secondly that, as there is no finality in such dealings, it would only whet the motorists’ appetite for more. It is generally overlooked, too, though the point is a very important one, that the invaders have already got much more than their due share of the district; for the making of many of the roads now in existence would have been strongly opposed years ago, if it had been possible to foresee the riotous use to which they would be put.

But it is when we turn to the mountains of Snowdonia that we see what inexcusable injury has been done by the rapacity of private enterprise, connived at by the indifference of the public. It is a somewhat strange fact that, while there is an English branch of the League for the Preservation of Swiss Scenery, no organized attempt is made to preserve our own mountain scenery, not from desecration merely, but from destruction.[37]

Take, for example, the case of the River Glaslyn, which flows from the heart of Snowdon through Cwm Dyli and Nant Gwynant, till it finds its way by the Pass of Aberglaslyn to the sea. Visitors are often invited to admire the “power works,” erected some years ago at the head of Nant Gwynant, and other signs of enterprise; but from the nature-lover’s point of view there is a different tale to tell. The once shapely peak of Snowdon has been blunted into a formless cone by the Summit Hotel, which has since added to its premises a battlemented wall built of red brick; both Glaslyn and Llyn Llydaw, two tarns of flawless natural beauty, have long been befouled with copper mines; and more recently the glorious waterfall, through which the stream dashed headlong from Cwm Dyli to Nant Gwynant, has been replaced by a line of hideous metal pipes, by which the whole hillside is scarred. As for the far-famed Pass of Aberglaslyn, defaced as it is by railway works and tunnellings, remorselessly begun and then temporarily abandoned, its state can only be described as one of stagnant devastation.

Yet all this mountain scenery, which has been foolishly sacrificed for private purposes, might have been a public possession of inestimable value had it been tended as it deserved; and much yet remains in Snowdonia that might be saved for the enjoyment and refreshment of future generations, if the apathy of public feeling, and of the Welsh people, could be dispelled. But it is useless to look for local resistance to this vandalism, for one is always met by the assertion, true but irrelevant, that such enterprises “give work”; which, indeed, would equally justify the pulling down of Westminster Abbey to “give work” to the unemployed of London. Nothing but an enlightened public opinion, unmistakably expressed, can now avert the destruction (for such it is) of the noblest of Welsh, perhaps of all British mountains.

It is strange that the incongruity—the lack of humour—in these outrages on the sanctitude of a great mountain does not make itself felt. What could be more ridiculous, apart from the gross vandalism of the act, than to put a railway-station on Snowdon? A friend who knows the Welsh mountains intimately told me that on his first visit to the peak, after the building of the Summit Hotel, he remarked to a companion: “We shall be expected to have a green chartreuse after lunch here.” A waiter, overhearing him, said: “We ain’t got no green chartreuse, sir; but we have cherry brandy and curaÇoa, if you like.”

In a little book entitled On Cambrian and Cumbrian Hills, published in 1908, I commented strongly on these outrages, and the justice of my criticisms with regard to the ruin of Welsh mountain scenery was not seriously disputed in the local press, though one editor did accuse me of being guilty of “a wicked libel upon the people of Wales,” and expressed himself as having been caused “real pain” by my remarks. When, however, I asked him to consider what real pain the disfigurement of Snowdon had caused to mountain-lovers, and suggested that, instead of taking me to task, he should try to arouse his readers to put an end to the vandalism which, for the sake of a temporary profit, is ruining some of the finest portions of Carnarvonshire, he made a reply which was, in fact, a most signal corroboration of my complaint; for he stated that I had evidently “no conception of the difficulties which residents in North Wales have to encounter when they oppose any commercial enterprise, backed up by English speculators, which threatens to spoil our beauty-spots.”[38] There we have the fatal truth in a sentence! What is spoiling Snowdonia is the commercial cupidity of the Welsh themselves, utilized by English capitalists. The editor naÏvely added that, were I myself living in North Wales, I should be “more sympathetic.” More sympathetic, that is, with the Welsh residents, who know that their country is being spoiled, but dare not say so; less sympathetic with the mountain-lovers who deplore this crime!

In the excuses put forward for the invasion of the mountains with funicular railways, motor high-roads, and the like, there is a comic element which would be vastly entertaining if the very existence of mountain scenery were not at stake. Thus I have been met with the argument that a mountain railway, such as that on Snowdon, “takes into a purer atmosphere and into an ennobling environment those who have no other way of learning the lesson that grand mountains can teach,” to wit, “the enfeebled toilers of the towns.” I was reminded, as one convicted of “a little selfishness,” that “the weak and the feeble have to be considered, as well as the athletic and the hardy.” But, in the first place, those who travel by so expensive a route as this mountain railway are rarely the toilers of the towns, nor, so far as I have observed them, are they “the weak and the feeble.” They seem to be mostly able-bodied well-to-do tourists, who are too lazy to use their legs. I once overheard a passenger in a train, describing a recent Swiss trip, make the remark: “Oh, no, I didn’t walk a step. Funicular railways up nearly all the mountains—Pilatus, Rigi, and the rest. I wouldn’t give a fig to walk.”

It is amusing, too, to find “imperial” reasons advanced in defence of the Snowdon railroad, in what is called the “Official Guide,” a pamphlet published by the London and North-Western Railway at Llanberis England, we are proudly told, “does not usually care to be behind other countries in matters of progress, but, with regard to the application of mechanical means for reaching the peaks of mountains, until now it has certainly been so.” The inference is obvious. Patriotic climbers should ascend Snowdon by train.

Then there is the clever appeal to the sense of peril and romance. We are informed in the same disinterested treatise that the owner of Snowdon (yes, reader, Snowdon is owned!), “having regard to the exigencies of the modern tourist, the increasing eagerness of people to ‘do’ Snowdon, and the dangers which beset the ordinary ways available for that purpose, felt that the solitude and sanctity of Snowdon ought, to a certain extent, to give way before the progressive advance of the age.” And again: “Hitherto none but the most daring or the most sanguine would venture to ascend during a storm.... None the less, however, Snowdon during a storm presents a scene of impressive grandeur, and the new railway will make it possible to see it under this aspect without risk.” Henceforth poets will know how to view the grandeur of the gathering storm. “I climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn,” sang Scott. The modern singer will take a ticket on the Snowdon Mountain Tramroad.

The true objection to mountain railways is not that they bring more people to the mountain, but that they spoil the very thing that the people come to see, viz. the mountain itself. The environment, in fact, is no longer “ennobling” when a mountain-top is vulgarized, as Snowdon has been, by a railway and hotel; it is then not a mountain scene at all. There are numberless points of view in North Wales, and in every highland district, to which the weak and feeble can be easily conveyed, and from which they can see the mountains at their best; but to construct a railway to the chief summit is “to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs,” because, when that is done, there is no mountain (in the true sense) any longer for the enjoyment of either feeble or strong.

And surely the feeble can seek their enjoyment in fitter ways than in being hauled up mountains by steam. I have heard of a blind man who walked, with a friend to guide him, to the top of Goatfell, in the Isle of Arran, because he wished to feel the mountain air and to hear the thunder of the sea waves far away below. Was not that better than spoiling Goatfell with a rail? Not, of course, that such railways are really made for the benefit of the feeble-bodied; they are built for commercial purposes, to put money into private pockets at the expense of scenery which should belong to the community as a whole.

But it is not only the nature-lover and the rock-climber who are interested in the preservation of mountains; the naturalist also, and the botanist, are very deeply concerned, for the extermination of the rarer fauna and flora is practically assured unless the onroad of this vandalism is checked. The golden eagle, the kite, and the osprey are gone. Do we desire such birds as the raven, the chough, the buzzard, and the peregrine falcon to survive in their few remaining strongholds? If so, we must take measures to stop the depredations not only of the egg-collecting tourist, but of the death-dealing gamekeeper.

The flight of the buzzard is one of the greatest glories of the hills of Cumberland and Carnarvonshire, and it is deeply to be regretted that so beautiful and harmless a bird should be wantonly destroyed. The worst—or should we say the best?—that can be said of the buzzard is that in very rare instances he has been known to “stoop” at persons who approach his eyrie. In a letter which appeared in the Lakes Chronicle some years ago a tourist absurdly complained that he had been attacked on a mountain near Windermere by a “huge bird “—evidently a buzzard—and urged that “it would be to the advantage of the public if some good shot were to free the mountain of this foul-fiend usurper.” The buzzard defending his nest is a “foul-fiend usurper”! Such is the amount of sympathy which the average tourist has with the wild mountain bird! And as for the ornithological knowledge, this may be judged from the fact that a similar incident on the same mountain was actually described in the papers under the head, “Bustard attacks a clergyman.”

Of the wild upland flora there is the same tale to tell. The craze for collecting, and what is worse, uprooting, the rarer Alpine plants has almost brought about the extinction of several species, such as the saxifraga nivalis, which used to be fairly frequent on Snowdon, Helvellyn, and other British hills; and this in spite of the many appeals that have been made to the better feeling of tourists. Public spirit in these matters seems to be wellnigh dead.

What, then, is being done, in the face of these destructive agencies, to preserve our wild mountain districts, and the wild life that is native to them, from the ruin with which they are threatened? As far as I am aware, apart from occasional protests in newspapers, this only—that appeals are made to the public from time to time by the National Trust and kindred societies to save, by private purchase, certain “beauty spots” from spoliation. These appeals cannot but meet with the entire approval of nature-lovers, and the rescuing of such estates as Catbells, Gowbarrow, Grange Fell, and others that might be mentioned, represents a real measure of success. Still the question has to be faced—what is to be done in the future if, as is certain to happen, the menace to our mountains is maintained? It is too much to hope that large sums can always be raised by private subscription; also, while one favoured place is being safeguarded, others, less fortunate, are being destroyed. We cannot save our mountains generally by these piecemeal purchases; for even if the money were always procurable, the rate of destruction exceeds that of purchase, and the power of the many syndicates that would exploit the mountains must necessarily be greater than that of the few Societies that would preserve them. In a word, private action is quite inadequate, in the long run, to repel so extensive an attack.

What is needed is public action on a scale commensurate with the evil, in the direction of the “reservation” of certain districts as sanctuaries for all wild life. We need, in fact, highland parks, in which the hills themselves, with the wild animals and plants whose life is of the hills, shall be preserved in their wildness as the property of the people; an arrangement which would be equally gratifying to the nature-lover, the naturalist, and the mountaineer, and of vastly more “profit” to the nation as a whole than the disfigurement of its beautiful places.

Without at all suggesting that the National Trust should relax its efforts for the rescue by purchase of particular tracts, I think that it would be doing a still greater service if it could see its way to organizing a movement for pressing on the Government the urgent need of taking some active steps to counteract the injury which is being done by commercial interests to the true interests of the people. Otherwise the result will be that while a few spots are saved, whole districts will be lost, and eventually all that the nation will possess will be some oases of beauty in a desert of ugliness.

As I have elsewhere pointed out,[39] there is only one thorough solution of the problem, and that is, to nationalize such districts as Snowdonia, Lakeland, the Peak of Derbyshire, and other public holiday-haunts, and so to preserve them for the use and enjoyment of the people for all time. “If parks, open spaces, railways, tramways, water, and other public needs can be nationalized, why not mountains? It is impossible to over-estimate the value of mountains as a recreation-ground for soul and body; yet, while we are awaking to the need of maintaining public rights in other directions, we are allowing our mountains—in North Wales and elsewhere—to be sacrificed to commercial selfishness. If Snowdon, for instance, had been purchased by the public twenty years ago, the investment would have been a great deal more profitable than those in which we usually engage; but while we are willing to spend vast sums on grabbing other people’s territory, we have not, of course, a penny to spare for the preservation of our own.”