With the features which I have mentioned, the barren hillside is not likely to lose its attractiveness for nature-lovers. A wilderness it may be, but of a sort which brings to mind the rapt words of the poet—
Oh, wilderness were paradise enow.
VII
Slag-Heap or Sanctuary?
Mountains have in all ages given asylum to free races. Has the time come when a free race must give asylum to its mountains? If we are to have any voice in the answer, the question is one which, in this country at least, cannot much longer be set aside; for though the encroachments of “civilization” on wild Nature have been more or less discussed since the famous “Tours” of Thomas Pennant created the modern tourist, and sent him roaming through the hills, the problem of how to preserve our mountain scenery—if we wish to preserve it—has become much more pressing with the great industrial development of the past hundred years, and it is no exaggeration to say that if it is not solved within the next half-century there may be no mountain scenery to preserve.
It is not to be doubted that, as civilization advances, mountain districts, like all other wild districts, must be gradually “opened out,” and made to minister more fully to human wants; but, then, what are those wants, and how can they best be gratified? The man who owned the goose that laid the golden eggs wanted golden eggs, but his too hasty method of opening out the goose defeated the purpose he had in view. In like manner, if we want to make our mountains more serviceable to the people, we must think whether the methods which we are at present adopting will conduce to that end. Look at the working of these methods among the Cambrian and Cumbrian hills.
Snowdonia has long been a sufferer from foreign and native aggression. It is said that Edward I, to celebrate his conquest of Wales, held “a triumphal fair” on Snowdon, in open defiance of the national sentiment by which this peak was held as holy as was Parnassus by the Greeks. What is more surprising is that the Welsh themselves have in later times so fully acquiesced in the defilement of their sacred mountain, and that the present plight of Snowdon would seem to be a pride rather than a shame to them; for all earlier outrages sink into nothingness when compared with the work of the past fifty years. The copper-mines in Cwm Dyli, which have been worked, and neglected, and worked again, have greatly defaced the mountain, have poisoned the waters, and submerged the islands of Llyn Llydaw, once the haunt of the sea-gull; but it was not until the railway was built from Llanberis, and an hotel placed on the summit, that irreparable harm was done by deforming the natural shape of Y Wyddfa, the topmost peak, into a dull, blunted cone.
Take 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 a few 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, for the glorious waterfall, through which the stream dashed headlong from Cwm Dyli, 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.
It is a curious fact, too, that this greed for exploiting the natural scenery of Wales goes hand in hand with a complete neglect of such legitimate and really useful means of utilizing the tourist-season as the erection of signposts, and the maintenance of bridle-paths and mountain-tracks, which, without disfiguring the scenery, are of great service to walkers.