Then, perhaps, comes sharper weather still, and the punts can no longer move over the ice-bound waters. This is the time of the skater's festival, and a nobler skating-ground can nowhere be found. Over river and pool and broad he flies, with unnumbered miles of clear, open ice before him.
BY DALE AND FELL.
The huge county of Yorkshire has many claims on our attention. It has vast manufacturing centres, and in some parts it is crowded thickly with towns and villages, packed with mills, and studded with lofty chimneys which belch out unceasing clouds of smoke. Then, again, it has a splendid coast-line, with noble cliffs and rocky headlands, dotted with quaint fishing villages and tiny ports, whence the "cobles" put out to sea with hardy fishermen aboard. And, striking right away inland, it can show some of the most beautiful scenery in its dales and fells that our country has to show.
Putting busy town and breezy fishing village aside for the moment, we will go up to the lofty moorland heights of this "county of the broad acres" and see some of their beauties, and hear some of the tales which linger around their quiet, grey stone villages.
On the western side of Yorkshire the land heaves up to the Pennine Chain—the "backbone of England," as it is often called. It is not a chain of sharply-defined peaks; it is rather a great mass of rolling moorland whose tablelands, the "fells," are divided from each other by deep valleys, long and narrow—the famous "dales." At the foot of each dale flows a swift river, which, twisting and turning round sharp angles of rock, leaping from ledge to ledge in sheets of foam, or gliding in deep quiet stretches below an overhanging wood, affords most striking and picturesque scenery.
There are many points at which the explorer may strike into the hills from the more level and cultivated part of the county. But perhaps the best of all is to enter the dales at Richmond, a beautiful old town beside the River Swale. It matters not from which point you approach Richmond, there is one feature of the view which catches the eye at once—the magnificent fashion in which the splendid Norman keep of its castle rises above the little town. The stately tower stands up four-square to every wind, just as its Norman builders left it 800 years ago, and around it cluster the red roofs of the town, just as they gathered there for shelter during the Middle Ages.
From Richmond the Valley of the Swale runs up into the Pennines, and the journey along it must be made by foot or carriage, for no railway has penetrated the solitudes of Swaledale, and, as far as one may look into the future in such matters, there seems every possibility of this loveliest and grandest of the Yorkshire dales retaining its isolation in this respect. About a mile from the town there is a lofty cliff called Whitcliffe Scar, whence the spectator may see far up the dale whither he proposes to journey. The country people call the Scar "Willance's Leap," and it has borne this name since 1606. In that year a certain Robert Willance was out hunting, and a great mist came down the dale and wrapped the hills. So thick was the fog that Willance could scarcely see a yard before him, and suddenly he found himself on the verge of the Scar. It was too late to check or turn his horse: both went headlong over the lofty cliff, and were hurled to its foot. The horse was killed on the spot, but in some miraculous fashion the rider found himself alive at the foot of the precipice, his worst injury a broken leg. Full of wonder and thankfulness, Willance erected inscribed stones to commemorate his marvellous escape, and the stones are still to be seen at that point of the cliff from which he fell. He also presented a silver cup in memory of this event to Richmond, and the cup remains in the possession of the town.
Pushing westwards through the bold and striking scenery of the dale, we pass glen after glen, each with its little beck, its moorland stream. At times the headlands spring up so abruptly as almost to shut in the dale, and in times of storm the thunder rumbles from wall to wall of the glen with tremendous echoes. Wonderful at such times of heavy rain is it to see how swiftly the little brooks become swollen, how the main stream becomes a raging, foaming torrent. Then we understand why the bridges are so high and strong. They had seemed far too large for the little river pushing over the stones: they seem none too strong now to withstand the terrific rush of flood-water sent down from the broad faces of the fells.
As we gain the higher parts of the dale, trees and corn and rich meadow-land are left behind. The farms are sheep-farms, and the moors stretch on every hand. The houses are strongly built of grey stone, and where there are fields, grey stone walls divide them, for hedges cannot grow on these windy, storm-swept heights.