Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2

by John Wilson

"The smiling power of cultivation lies,"

yet leaves, with lines defined by the steeps that defy the ploughshare, copses and groves; and thus we are brought into the Dale itself, and soon have a vision of the whole—green and golden fields—for though most are in pasture, almost all seem arable—sprinkled with fine single trees—and lying in flats and levels, or swelling into mounds and knolls, and all diversified with every kind of woods; single cottages, with their out-buildings, standing everywhere they should stand, and coloured like the rocks from which in some lights they are hardly to be distinguished—strong-roofed and undilapidated, though many of them very old; villages, apart from one another a mile—and there are three—yet on their sites, distant and different in much though they be, all associated together by the same spirit of beauty that pervades all the Dale. Half way up, and in some places more, the enclosing hills and even mountains are sylvan indeed, and though there be a few inoffensive aliens, they are all adorned with their native trees. The mountains are not so high as in our Highlands, but they are very majestic; and the Passes over into Langdale, and Wastdalehead, and Buttermere, are magnificent, and show precipices in which the Golden Eagle himself might rejoice.

No—there is no glen in all the Highlands comparable with Borrowdale. Yet we know of some that are felt to be kindred places, and their beauty though less, almost as much affects us, because though contending, as it were, with the darker spirit of the mountain, it is not overcome, but prevails; and their beauty will increase with years. For while the rocks continue to frown aloft for ever, and the cliffs to range along the corries, unbroken by trees, which there the tempest will not suffer to rise, the woods and groves below, preserved from the axe, for sake of their needful shelter, shall become statelier, till the birch equal the pine; reclaimed from the waste, shall many a fresh field recline among the heather, tempering the gloom; and houses arise where now there are but huts, and every house have its garden:—such changes are now going on, and we have been glad to observe their progress, even though sometimes they had removed, or were removing, objects dear from old associations, and which, had it been possible, but it was not, we should have loved to see preserved.

And one word on those sweet pastoral seclusions into which one often drops unexpectedly, it may be at the close of day, and finds a night's lodging in the only hut. Yet they lie, sometimes, embosomed in their own green hills, among the most rugged mountains, and even among the wildest moors. They have no features by which you can describe them; it is their serenity that charms you, and their cheerful peace; perhaps it is wrong to call them glens, and they are but dells. Yet one thinks of a dell as deep, however small it may be; but these are not deep, for the hills slope down gently upon them, and leave room perhaps between for a little shallow loch. Often they have not any visible water at all, only a few springs and rivulets, and you wonder to see them so very green; there is no herbage like theirs; and to such spots of old, and sometimes yet, the kine are led in summer, and there the lonely family live in their shieling till the harvest moon.

We have all along used the same word, and called the places we have spoken of—glens. A fine observer—the Editor of Gilpin's Forest Scenery—has said: "The gradation from extreme width downwards should be thus arranged,—strath, vale, dale, valley, glen, dell, ravine, chasm. In the strath, vale, and dale, we may expect to find the large, majestic, gently flowing river, or even the deeper or smaller lake. In the glen, if the river be large, it flows more rapidly, and with greater variety. In the dell the stream is smaller. In the ravine, we find the mountain torrent and the waterfall. In the chasm, we find the roaring cataract, or the rill, bursting from its haunted fountain. The chasm discharges its small tribute into the ravine, while the ravine is tributary to the dell, and thence to the glen; and the glen to the dale."

These distinctions are admirably expressed, and perfectly true to nature; yet we doubt if it would be possible to preserve them in describing a country, and assuredly they are very often indeed confused by common use in the naming of places. We have said nothing about Straths—nor shall we try to describe one—but suggest to your own imagination—as specimens—Strath-Spey, Strath-Tay, Strath-Earn. The dominion claimed by each of those rivers, within the mountain ranges that environ their courses, is a strath; and three noble straths they are, from source to sea.

And now we are brought to speak of the Highland Rivers, Streams, and Torrents; but we shall let them rush or flow, murmur or thunder in your own ears, for you cannot fail to imagine what the waters must be in a land of such glens and such mountains. The chief rivers possess all the attributes essential to greatness—width—depth—clearness—rapidity—in one word power. And some of them have long courses—rising in the central heights, and winding round many a huge projection, against which in flood we have seen them dashing like the sea. Highland droughts are not of long duration; the supplies are seldom withheld at once by all the tributaries; and one wild night among the mountains converts a calm into a commotion—the many-murmuring voice into one roar. In flood they are terrible to look at; and every whirlpool seems a place of torment. Winds can make a mighty noise in swinging woods, but there is something to our ears more appalling in that of the fall of waters. Let them be united—and add thunder from the clouds—and we have heard in the Highlands all three in one—and the auditor need not care that he has never stood by Niagara. But when "though not o'erflowing full," a Highland river is in perfection; far better do we love to see and hear him rejoicing than raging; his attributes appear more his own in calm and majestic manifestations, and as he glides or rolls on, without any disturbance, we behold in him an image at once of power and peace.

Of rivers—comparatively speaking—of the second and third order—the Highlands are full—and on some of them the sylvan scenery is beyond compare. No need there to go hunting the waterfalls. Hundreds of them—some tiny indeed, but others tall—are for ever dinning in the woods; yet, at a distance from the cataract, how sweet and quiet is the sound! It hinders you not from listening to the cushat's voice; clear amidst the mellow murmur comes the bleating from the mountain; and all other sound ceases, as you hearken in the sky to the bark of the eagle—rare indeed anywhere, but sometimes to be heard as you thread the "glimmer or the gloom" of the umbrage overhanging the Garry or the Tummel—for he used to build in the cliffs of Ben-Brackie, and if he has shifted his eyrie, a few minutes' waftage will bear him to Cairn-Gower.

In speaking of the glens, we but alluded to the rivers or streams, and some of them, indeed, even the great ones, have but rivulets; while in the greatest, the waters often flow on without a single tree, shadowed but by rocks and clouds. Wade them, and you find they are larger than they seem to be; for looked at along the bottom of those profound hollows, they are but mere slips of sinuous light in the sunshine, and in the gloom you see them not at all. We do not remember any very impressive glen, without a stream, that would not suffer some diminution of its power by our fancying it to have one; we may not be aware, at the time, that the conformation of the glen prevents its having any water-flow, but if we feel its character aright, that want is among the causes of our feeling; just as there are some scenes of which the beauty would not be so touching were there a single tree.

Thousands and tens of thousands there are of nameless perennial torrents, and "in number without number numberless" those that seldom live a week—perhaps not a day. Up among the loftiest regions you hear nothing, even when they are all allow; yet, there is music in the sight, and the thought of the "general dance and minstrelsy" enlivens the air, where no insect hums. As on your descent you come within hearing of the "liquid lapses," your heart leaps within you, so merrily do they sing; the first torrent-rill you meet with you take for your guide, and it leads you perhaps into some fairy dell, where it wantons awhile in waterfalls, and then gliding along a little dale of its own with "banks o' green bracken," finishes its short course in a stream—one of many that meet and mingle before the current takes the name of river, which in a mile or less becomes a small woodland lake. There are many such of rememberable beauty; living lakes indeed, for they are but pausings of expanded rivers, which again soon pursue their way, and the water-lilies have ever a gentle motion there as if touched by a tide.