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 and seasons, than that of the shepherd born and bred on its slopes, not to speak of the summer visitor who comes there for mere pastime or recreation.
VI
The Barren Hillside
We talk of the barrenness of the mountains, and barren in a sense they are, when contrasted with the teeming wealth of the plain, yet the bleakest of them, if studied with sympathy and insight, will be found to have a living and life-giving freshness of its own. Now and then, perhaps, when face to face with some scene of more than common severity, we are tempted to exclaim, with Scott:
The wildest glen, but this, can show
Some touch of nature’s genial glow:
On high Benmore green mosses grow,
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencoe,
And copse on Cruchan-Ben;