IV. A Sketch of Duddonside
At the stepping-stones people on wandering bent generally cross, and, turning upstream, are soon within the mighty Duddon gorge, where founts of green water dash through barriers of piled-up rocks crowned with heather and brambles.
It was early autumn. Through the cool air came the notes of some of the later songsters, on the moors beds of green bracken still waved, but here and there single fronds were turning orange and crimson and yellow. Great bushes of glossy holly began to be noticeable on the crags as the brakes of hazel and whitethorn thinned off their summer foliage. On the bosky hillsides whitish patches of sphagnum were framed with bands of fiery red bog-grass. The dale was resonant to the turmoilings of water, down every ghyll foaming cataracts sprang, while here and there deep floods surged through the level woodlands. The air was marvellously clear, every knot and slack on the mountains showed plainly, and the fresh bright sunshine gave everything, from the caërn on the topmost crag of Wallabarrow to the wind-tangled bracken-beds near our path, a halo of glory. Here and there rabbits frisked to the shelter of burrow or fern, and once the half-choke of a cock-pheasant called his harem together to flee our approach. Along a path marked with pools of mud and water and studded with boulders we plunged into the low screen of oak and ash, and in a few minutes were beside the stepping-stones.
The river in front was at half-flood; the crossing was covered a foot deep with clear, racing water. Far upstream, waterbreaks were gleaming between gray boulders and many-tinted coppices; the roar as the current fretted through its rough channel came to our ears incessantly. In the shade of the larches we found an almost level path to our left, worn, doubtless, by sheep ranging the glades of these woods. A jay screamed and flew away, its blue side-feathers attracting the eye as it winged through the maze of stems. The river was again close beside—a deep pool in which the sunlit water seemed to collect strength to go babbling down an inclined beach of smoothed stones. The river-bank became tangled with brambles and dense coppice, so we turned into a mysterious hollow where perhaps centuries ago Duddon’s stream varied from its present bed. In a few yards we cleared the trees and stood by a hollow in the woods. The stream in its ancient course had here tarried awhile and delved out a circular pool before passing seaward. Here, perhaps, the red deer had come by moonlight to drink—I never ramble by Duddonside without my memory reverting to these animals, which less than a century ago roamed in wild freedom over the great silent wastes surrounding the valley. But now the bracken is rustled by wandering sheep, which turn and stare at such unusual visitors. We fringed this eddying place of a forgetful river, and dived into the dense coppice beyond, where brambles so hampered our path that we left the proximity of the water to find an old cart-track. On the hazel bushes a few nuts still hung, and twice there were glimpses of flying russet and white—squirrels disturbed at their repast. The old ‘gait’ found, we strolled steadily along: this wood in springtime must have been carpeted with blue; the fleshy green leaves of the bluebell protrude through layers of rotting leaves and twigs. But when autumn is at hand flowers are rare in the riverside woods—a solitary strawberry bloom, maybe, with here and there a belated primrose or daisy. What the sweet summer glory of this paradise has been is recalled by the wealth of dead honeysuckle trailers and the dried-up stems of many wildvines. Now, descending a sharp hillock, we are by the ford in Tarn beck. The steady murmur to our right warns us of near Duddon, and we resolve to walk down to where the waters meet. The saplings are so dense by the waterside that we again seek the less difficult woods, coming at last to a narrow path bounded by thorn-bushes, brambles, and the punishing boughs of the wild-rosetree. Ten yards on we are on the point where the two streams meet. Tarn beck has scooped itself a little bay, but the lordly Duddon here sleeps in a deep pool among the shingles.
What words can describe the contrast between the rattling, dashing rivulet and the great placid, sunlit stream into which it falls and is lost? On this very spot, amid a tangle of brambles and many fronded brackens, the great poet of the fells stood in imagination when he wrote:
‘Duddon ...
Who, ’mid a world of images imprest
On the calm depth of his transparent breast,
Appears to cherish most that Torrent white,
The fairest, softest, liveliest of them all.’
He saw it at ‘the busy hum of noon,’ when its ‘murmur musical’ promised refreshment to distant meadows needing rain; but what would he have written if he had seen it as we did, if he had seen the velvet green of the aftermath in the fields across the river, and noted the woods of autumn just flushing into realms of red and crimson and gold—if he had witnessed the glory of that October morning, when the air was instinct with light, and the ear was charmed with varied cadences of falling and rippling water? Then Wordsworth’s magic pen would have traced lines fairer far than those the scene actually inspired. But, alas! the mind of a trifler with Nature rises with difficulty to such enchanted heights nor stays there—for cunningly hid between the veiling undergrowth and the upspringing grass I espied the stem of a sapling ash with its branchlets roughly lopped off. For curiosity I drew this forth, and, lo! there, scraped on the tender gray-green bark, here and there—bitten through to the white wood—were the marks of the rings attached to the salmon-poacher’s bag-net. Wordsworth and the serene majesty of the morning were alike instantly forgotten in the contemplation of this sign of a ‘black art.’ It was simple enough to conjure up that scene of last night.
About a dozen salmon have collected in this pool, waiting for a flood to allow them to pass through the roaring, broken rapids of the gorge to spawning redds far above. For some hours vigilant eyes have been upon their movements, and now in the pitch darkness of midnight two men approach the riverside from opposite directions. Cautious signals are exchanged ere they meet behind a screen of bushes, and are repeated as they stealthily patrol the riversides. Then away in the woods near the stepping-stones the axe is plied with muffled vigour; the branches rustle with their neighbours as, the stem being severed, they are drawn downward. The steel is scarcely audible as the lesser limbs are struck away and the net-pole prepared. With hardly a sound the poacher threads his way through the coppices, and he is soon again by the pool’s marge.
In the meantime his comrade has drawn their net from beneath the concave bank, has laid it straight on the dank grass (there is the draggled, tramped sward), and soon has the rings fixed on the pole. Now all is ready, and the younger man takes the long shaft, and with a sweep draws the net into the pool. In a moment it becomes saturated and sinks, then is carefully drawn forward. The strain on the netsman is great; he bends to the task and puts forward his utmost strength, but in vain. He cannot force his contrivance against the current—here, though flowing soft, Duddon is really very powerful—so his comrade comes to his assistance.
By their united efforts the net is brought nearer land. As they bend over, the sheen from the water lights up the faces of the struggling men. There is satisfaction in every coarse and bloated line. As the net moves the surface of the pool becomes troubled, a fin or a tail cuts through the water: the salmon, though enmeshed, are exerting themselves to escape. But in vain, for, with an oath at the coldness of the water, the elder poacher steps into the pool, going deeper and deeper till the water rises to his shoulders, till he is able to force the pole and its heavily-laden bag-net to the surface and then ashore. In the clear depths his footmarks are traceable by the places where the moss was scraped from the stones by the hobnails of his boots.
The fish are rapidly killed and their carcases placed in bags (here and there a broken scale gleams silvern among the grass and shales); then, one carrying the unrigged net in addition to his load of salmon, the poachers are quickly lost to sight in the woods. Such is the story told by the abandoned net-pole and the shores of the robbed salmon-pool.
We turned aside from the river, scrambling up a steep clay bank, forcing a passage through a barricade of hazels, and in a couple of minutes were once again in a cleared area. Crossing this, in the shadow of the larch grove, here and there were quite considerable conical mounds, seemingly composed of dead sections of twigs. In and out of these by a thousand tunnel entrances were moving files of large black ants. These hills claimed our attention awhile. They were indeed cunningly built, and more than once a longing came to make an examination of their interiors. A scientist or a competent naturalist would have been justified in such an experiment, but not a pair of mere wanderers.
To compensate us, as it seemed, almost at once we heard a soft patter of paws and a soughing of delicate branches—a squirrel was dashing along the boughs not far away. As soon as the tree-bole was reached, the russet body whisked out of sight at great speed, but an eye kept on the point where it disappeared soon detected two sharp, tufted ears and a pair of bright eyes anxiously watching our movements. I called my companion’s attention to this, and so long as we refrained from movement the keen three-sided contemplation went on; but as soon as my arm stirred the little head was withdrawn, and I knew that four legs were carrying the squirrel swiftly up towards the crown of the tree. And, as anticipated, after the lapse of a few seconds the little animal reappeared on a branch quite a long way up, quietly observing us. The squirrels of Duddonside suffer little persecution by humans evidently, for this one had a curious, if rather distant, interest in us, and refused to be scared by any pretence at hostilities. Even as we moved away, a backward glance told us that the animal had altered its position to get a final glance, and was now hanging head downwards, peering at us from under the branch it was sitting upon.
A few minutes more, and the swiftly-moving waters of Duddon appear through the straight larch-stems. We are close beside the impassable stepping-stones and our path back from the woods to the little hamlet by the church.