But it is not for the lover of the picturesque alone that the district offers more than ordinary attractions. There are few localities so rich in records of the past, or surrounded by so many traditional associations. In addition to the magnificent ruins of Furness, there is the scarcely less interesting pile of Cartmel, one of the few priory churches that England now possesses, and which only escaped destruction in the stormy times of the Reformation by the inhabitants literally buying off the King’s Commissioners. On Swarthmoor, “the German baron, bold Martin Swart,” mustered “his merry men” when Lambert Simnel, the pretender to the Crown, landed at Piel, in 1486, an escapade in which we fear “Our Lady of Furness” was not altogether free from implication. Here, too, is Swarthmoor Hall, once the home of Judge Fell; and close by is the modest Quakers’ Chapel, the first built by George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends. Holker Hall has been for a century and more the home of the Cavendishes, as it was previously of the Lowthers and the Prestons. The little hamlet of Lindale has been made the scene of one of the most charming of Mrs. Gaskell’s stories, and almost within bow-shot is Buck Crag, sheltering beneath which is the humble dwelling that for many a long year was the abode of Edmund Law, the curate and schoolmaster of Staveley, the spot where the younger Edmund Law, Bishop of Carlisle, and father of Lord Ellenborough, first saw the light.
Before the enterprise and skill of Brogden and Brunlees had bridged the estuaries of the Kent and the Leven, and carried the railway from Carnforth to Ulverston, the journey to Whitehaven and the western lakes had to be made across the broad expanse of sand left by each receding tide, and a perilous journey it was. In bygone days the monks of Cartmel maintained a guide, paid him out of “Peter’s Pence,” and, in addition, gave him the benefit of their prayers, which in truth he often needed; and when their house was dissolved, “Bluff King Hal” charged the expenses of the office upon the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster, so that the “Carter,” as he is now called, is an old-established institution. There is no beaten pathway “Over Sands,” for every tide removes the traces of those who have gone before, and the channels are so constantly shifting that what yesterday might be firm and solid to the tread, to-day may be only soft and treacherous pulp. The locality has been oftentimes the scene of mourning and sorrow, and many are the tales that are told of the “hair-breadth ’scapes” of those who have been overtaken by the “cruel crawling tide” while journeying over the perilous waste. The old adage tells us that
The Kent and the Keer
Have parted many a good man and his meear (mare).
GRANGE-OVER-SANDS.
And the registers of Cartmel bear testimony to the fact that, of those who now sleep peacefully in its “God’s Acre,” a hundred and twenty or more have met their fate while crossing the shifty channels of this treacherous shore. The poet Gray, writing in 1767 to Dr. Wharton, relates a pathetic story of a family who were overtaken by a mist when half way across and lost their way; and Edwin Waugh, in his pleasant, gossiping way, tells how an ancient mariner, when asked if the guides were ever lost on the sands, answered with grim naïveté: “I never knew any lost. There’s one or two drowned now and then, but they’re generally found somewhere i’th bed when th’ tide goes out.” When the subjects of the Cæsars had established themselves here, the old Roman General Agricola made a journey “Over Sands,” and the difficulties he encountered are related by Tacitus the historian. Mrs. Hemans braved the dangers, for in one of her letters she says: “I must not omit to tell you that Mr. Wordsworth not only admired our exploit in crossing the Ulverston Sands as a deed of ‘derring do,’ but as a decided proof of taste. The Lake scenery, he says, is never seen to such advantage as after the passage of what he calls its ‘majestic barrier.’” In the old coaching days the journey began at Hest Bank, about three miles from Lancaster, where the guide was usually in waiting to conduct the travellers across, when a mixed cavalcade of horsemen, pedestrians, and vehicles of various kinds was formed, which, following the coach, and headed by the browned and weather-beaten “Carter,” slowly traversed the trackless waste, the incongruous grouping suggesting the idea of an Eastern caravan on its passage across the desert. If nothing else, the journey had the charm of novelty and adventure, which in some degree compensated for the hazard incurred; and the scenes of danger and disaster witnessed have furnished the theme for more than one exciting story, as “Carlyon’s Year” and the “Sexton’s Hero” bear witness. But the romance of the sands is fast passing away. The guides have now comparatively little to do, the perilous path is traversed less and less frequently every year, so that ere long we shall probably only hear of it as a traditional feature of the times when the name of Stephenson was unknown and railways were only in the womb of time.