Such blue of heaven touched the cones of Skiddaw as one sees on a clear May morning above the Oberland peaks, and one wondered why it was that people who have no chance of seeing Switzerland did not take the opportunity of realising a Switzerland in miniature when it was close beside their doors. One reads of excursions to the Palace of Varieties at Manchester and Blackpool. How comes it about that no excursions are planned to such a world of varieties, such ivory palaces of winter's garnishing and nature's building, as, after heavy snowfall, may be found in Cumberland?
The frost was still in the shade within 10 degrees of zero; on Chestnut Hill it had been registered in the early morning as being within 4 degrees. People as they went about the roads felt their feet almost ring upon the snow, and children who tumbled into the powder rose and shook the fine dust from their hair and laughed to find they were as dry as a bone. The rooks above were silent and grave as they sat in solemn conclave on the ash tree at the stable-end and waited for such happy chances as the cook or chicken-man might give them. They were frozen out. Their tools were useless. But the tits were merry enough—blue tit, great tit, and cole tit; how they clung and spun and scooped at the cocoanuts and bones upon their Christmas tree! How the thrush pecked at the suet; how the starling and blackbird gobbled at the softened scraps upon the ground; and how the chaffinch and the robin partook of the crumbs that fell from the rich bird's table, as those crumbs came floating down from suet-lump or cocoanut above!
But we are off for a walk up to that old burial ground of the Viking chieftains from the land of the Frost Giants, which we still call the Ridge of Death—Latrigg of to-day. There, beside the path that leads from the main road, is the golf ground, but golf has been dispossessed by a fitter game for this season, and down the long slide shoot the tobogganers, and up the hill, with glowing faces and in silver clouds of their own breath, the happy people move. As one gazes into the valley another group of people in the neighbouring hollow may be seen hard at work with brush and curling stones, for the Keswick folk are some of them devotees to the rink, and the noise of the curlers fills the air to-day.
We climb Latrigg, noting how the blizzard has swept some of the snow from Skiddaw's western flank, and let the long yellow grasses and umber-coloured heather once more give their beauty of pencilling to the otherwise snow-white damask of their winter cloak. Thence, after far sight of the snow upon the Scotch hills sacred to the name of Cuthbert and the memory of his mission in Strathclyde, and near sight of the island hermitage, like a black jewel in the snow-field of the lake, which keeps the memory of St. Cuthbert's friend Herebert safe in mind, we descend to the vale.
ARCTIC SPLENDOURS AT THE LAKES.
As we descend we have a friendly crack with a shepherd from the high fells, whose dog has cleverly found and 'crowned' a handful of the Herdwick sheep prisoned by a snowdrift against a wall. How did he do this? 'Naay, I cannot tell tha, but I suppose t' dog nosed 'em, ye kna; dogs is wonderful keen scented.' And had the sheep taken hurt? 'Naay, naay; they were safe and warm as could be; they hedn't even begun to woo' yan anudder.' Wool one another, what's that? 'Oh, sheep, poor things, when they git snowbound and hev nowt to eat, teks to eatin' woo' off t' backs, to prevent pinin', ye kna.' So saying, the shepherd goes off, to quest for more, up to the land of loneliness and wintry wild, and I go down into the cheery vale.
How blue the snow is; you might have supposed the fields out 'Wythop' way had been washed with ultramarine; but one's eyes are caught back by the beauty of the snowdrifts by the roadside. These snowdrifts are for all the world as if great waves of milk had curled over to breaking, and at the moment had been fixed or changed into crystalline marble. And now the sun is gathering its glory back into itself, and hangs a globe of flame above 'Whinlatter' Pass. Suddenly the light goes out from all the valley meadows. The day star has sunk behind the hills. But still old Skiddaw flashes back the flame, and shepherds, out Newlands way, can see the bastions of Blencathra glow like molten gold.
For us, as we gaze out south, the range of Helvellyn is the miracle of beauty that holds our eyes. Far off and ghostly for the haze, it lies upon a background of rosy flushing afterglow, and seems to faint into a kind of impalpable phantom of its former strength—becomes no longer solid mountain, but spectral cloud. A light wind blows, and the oak leaves in the hedge tinkle like iron; the farmer calls the horse to get his hay, the wren chirrups or scolds from the wayside bank, and a partridge cries from the near field. Then all is silent and hushed for the coming of the queen. Over the dark pines upon Skiddaw, and above the silver shoulder of the hill, clear-faced and full, the February moon swims up to rule the night. And such a reign of splendour was then begun as I have no words to chronicle. For the heaven above Helvellyn was rosy pink, melting into blue, and the sky above Skiddaw was, or seemed to be, steel azure, and the west beyond the Wythop range was gleaming amber. There, in the midst of that golden sea, shone Venus like a point of silver fire. Sirius rose and scintillated above Helvellyn's ridge, Jupiter looked clear from near the zenith, and Orion girt his starry sword about him in mid-heaven; but it was the Moon who was the queen of all our hearts. It was she who laid her mystery upon the lakes, the hills, the valleys, white with snow; she who made one feel that if sunrise and sunsetting had been fair to-day, the moon-rising in a land of Arctic splendour had been fairer still.