III. A Mountain Ramble
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
‘with sparkling foam a small cascade
Illumines, from within, the leafy shade.’
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.
‘Resistless, roaring, dreadful, down it comes
From the rude mountain and the mossy wild,
Tumbled through rocks abrupt, and sounding far.’
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.