Seventy Years Among Savages

by Henry S. Salt

It is amusing, too, to find “imperial” reasons advanced in defence of the Snowdon railroad, in what is called the “Official Guide,” a pamphlet published by the London and North-Western Railway at Llanberis England, we are proudly told, “does not usually care to be behind other countries in matters of progress, but, with regard to the application of mechanical means for reaching the peaks of mountains, until now it has certainly been so.” The inference is obvious. Patriotic climbers should ascend Snowdon by train.

Then there is the clever appeal to the sense of peril and romance. We are informed in the same disinterested treatise that the owner of Snowdon (yes, reader, Snowdon is owned!), “having regard to the exigencies of the modern tourist, the increasing eagerness of people to ‘do’ Snowdon, and the dangers which beset the ordinary ways available for that purpose, felt that the solitude and sanctity of Snowdon ought, to a certain extent, to give way before the progressive advance of the age.” And again: “Hitherto none but the most daring or the most sanguine would venture to ascend during a storm.... None the less, however, Snowdon during a storm presents a scene of impressive grandeur, and the new railway will make it possible to see it under this aspect without risk.” Henceforth poets will know how to view the grandeur of the gathering storm. “I climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn,” sang Scott. The modern singer will take a ticket on the Snowdon Mountain Tramroad.

The true objection to mountain railways is not that they bring more people to the mountain, but that they spoil the very thing that the people come to see, viz. the mountain itself. The environment, in fact, is no longer “ennobling” when a mountain-top is vulgarized, as Snowdon has been, by a railway and hotel; it is then not a mountain scene at all. There are numberless points of view in North Wales, and in every highland district, to which the weak and feeble can be easily conveyed, and from which they can see the mountains at their best; but to construct a railway to the chief summit is “to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs,” because, when that is done, there is no mountain (in the true sense) any longer for the enjoyment of either feeble or strong.

And surely the feeble can seek their enjoyment in fitter ways than in being hauled up mountains by steam. I have heard of a blind man who walked, with a friend to guide him, to the top of Goatfell, in the Isle of Arran, because he wished to feel the mountain air and to hear the thunder of the sea waves far away below. Was not that better than spoiling Goatfell with a rail? Not, of course, that such railways are really made for the benefit of the feeble-bodied; they are built for commercial purposes, to put money into private pockets at the expense of scenery which should belong to the community as a whole.

But it is not only the nature-lover and the rock-climber who are interested in the preservation of mountains; the naturalist also, and the botanist, are very deeply concerned, for the extermination of the rarer fauna and flora is practically assured unless the onroad of this vandalism is checked. The golden eagle, the kite, and the osprey are gone. Do we desire such birds as the raven, the chough, the buzzard, and the peregrine falcon to survive in their few remaining strongholds? If so, we must take measures to stop the depredations not only of the egg-collecting tourist, but of the death-dealing gamekeeper.

The flight of the buzzard is one of the greatest glories of the hills of Cumberland and Carnarvonshire, and it is deeply to be regretted that so beautiful and harmless a bird should be wantonly destroyed. The worst—or should we say the best?—that can be said of the buzzard is that in very rare instances he has been known to “stoop” at persons who approach his eyrie. In a letter which appeared in the Lakes Chronicle some years ago a tourist absurdly complained that he had been attacked on a mountain near Windermere by a “huge bird “—evidently a buzzard—and urged that “it would be to the advantage of the public if some good shot were to free the mountain of this foul-fiend usurper.” The buzzard defending his nest is a “foul-fiend usurper”! Such is the amount of sympathy which the average tourist has with the wild mountain bird! And as for the ornithological knowledge, this may be judged from the fact that a similar incident on the same mountain was actually described in the papers under the head, “Bustard attacks a clergyman.”

Of the wild upland flora there is the same tale to tell. The craze for collecting, and what is worse, uprooting, the rarer Alpine plants has almost brought about the extinction of several species, such as the saxifraga nivalis, which used to be fairly frequent on Snowdon, Helvellyn, and other British hills; and this in spite of the many appeals that have been made to the better feeling of tourists. Public spirit in these matters seems to be wellnigh dead.

What, then, is being done, in the face of these destructive agencies, to preserve our wild mountain districts, and the wild life that is native to them, from the ruin with which they are threatened? As far as I am aware, apart from occasional protests in newspapers, this only—that appeals are made to the public from time to time by the National Trust and kindred societies to save, by private purchase, certain “beauty spots” from spoliation. These appeals cannot but meet with the entire approval of nature-lovers, and the rescuing of such estates as Catbells, Gowbarrow, Grange Fell, and others that might be mentioned, represents a real measure of success. Still the question has to be faced—what is to be done in the future if, as is certain to happen, the menace to our mountains is maintained? It is too much to hope that large sums can always be raised by private subscription; also, while one favoured place is being safeguarded, others, less fortunate, are being destroyed. We cannot save our mountains generally by these piecemeal purchases; for even if the money were always procurable, the rate of destruction exceeds that of purchase, and the power of the many syndicates that would exploit the mountains must necessarily be greater than that of the few Societies that would preserve them. In a word, private action is quite inadequate, in the long run, to repel so extensive an attack.

What is needed is public action on a scale commensurate with the evil, in the direction of the “reservation” of certain districts as sanctuaries for all wild life. We need, in fact, highland parks, in which the hills themselves, with the wild animals and plants whose life is of the hills, shall be preserved in their wildness as the property of the people; an arrangement which would be equally gratifying to the nature-lover, the naturalist, and the mountaineer, and of vastly more “profit” to the nation as a whole than the disfigurement of its beautiful places.

Without at all suggesting that the National Trust should relax its efforts for the rescue by purchase of particular tracts, I think that it would be doing a still greater service if it could see its way to organizing a movement for pressing on the Government the urgent need of taking some active steps to counteract the injury which is being done by commercial interests to the true interests of the people. Otherwise the result will be that while a few spots are saved, whole districts will be lost, and eventually all that the nation will possess will be some oases of beauty in a desert of ugliness.