My heart leaps up when I behold
The rainbow in the sky—
So was it when I was a boy;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
WORDSWORTH.
FOR our present purpose it is convenient to include, under the general title of the North–eastern Highlands, the vast mountain district, occupying portions of three counties, which extends from the Peak to the neighbourhood of Greenfield. Reached in part by the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire system, in part by the L. & N. W. Huddersfield line, it is tolerably well–known to travellers by those railways. They are cognizant of it as a region of lofty moorland, bleak and uninviting except at grouse–time. To people in general, however, it is as strange as Norway; and no wonder, since a visit to any one of the better portions implies a love of adventure which, if not exceptional, is infrequent. Glorious, nevertheless, are those untouched and silent wastes. Thousands of their acres have never felt the ploughshare, nay, not even the spade, and probably never will. In parts they seem to belong less to the existing order of nature than to obsolete ages, suggesting, like the Sahara, the idea of a former and exhausted world. Seal Bark might be the relics of some ancient mountain, torn to fragments when the wind whistled among the Calamites and the Sigillarias, now nothing but bones, nameless and immemorial.
The southernmost portion of this huge tract of wilderness is occupied by Kinder Scout, the highest factor of the Peak, the elevation being nearly two thousand feet above the sea; and which, presenting a “broad bare back” or plateau of fully four miles in length from east to west, with a width of more than half as much, is distinguishable at a glance, though often cloud–capped, from all its neighbours. Unfortunately for the rightful claims of massive Kinder, this great length detracts from its majesty, since the majestic, to be appreciated, always demands a certain amount of concentration. In substance, like most other parts of our “north–eastern highlands,” Kinder Scout is millstone–grit, thickly overlaid with mountain–peat, the foothold of wiry scrub, though, here and there presenting bold escarpments. The surface is deeply fissured by rills of drainage–water, and hillocks and depressions are universal. Paths cross it in various directions, but these of course are only for the brave.
The best route, when it is desired to ascend this noble eminence, is viâ Hayfield, beginning at Bowden Bridge, and going up the valley past Farlands. It is indispensable, however, either to be provided with a map, or to be accompanied by a guide, as well as to take precautions in regard to possible trespass.[19] Once upon the summit, the reward is ample, alike in the magnificent scenery, rich with distant purple shadows, and in the inspiring atmosphere. If in the landscape there is nothing gay and festal, no slight thing is it to stand in the presence–chamber of these antique solitudes, reading the silent history of centuries of winter ravage, so terrible that no wonder the very rocks have thrust up their grey heads to ask the meaning of it. No slight thing is it either at any time to find ourselves beside the very urn of a bounding and musical stream, such as trots along the valley, this one having its birth in “Kinder Downfall”—a far–seen shoot of water from the western cliff, a single silver line of pretty cataract that might have heard of Terni and the Bridal Veil, and so much the more precious because the only one of its kind within the distance, which is from Manchester, say precisely twenty miles. Rain of course is needed, as at Lodore, for the full development.
The writer of the “Guide” says that another very beautiful and not infrequent spectacle to be witnessed here is when in wet weather, or after a storm, the wind blows strongly from the W.S.W. “Coming from the direction of Hayfield, it sweeps over the Upper Moor and the bare backs of the bleak Blackshaws, and beating against the high flanking walls of rock is concentrated with prodigious power into the angle of the mountain, forcing back the whole volume of the cascade, and carrying it up in most fantastic and beautiful lambent forms, which are driven back again as heavy rain and mist for half a mile across the bog, then perhaps to return to be shivered into spray once more, unless in some momentary lull the torrent rushes down in huge volume.” “Sometimes,” he adds, “in winter, the fall, with the huge walls of rock flanking its sides, becomes one mass of icy stalactites, which as the sun declines present a magnificent spectacle.” According to Mr. H. B. Biden, in Notes and Queries, Feb. 16th, 1878, though other writers think differently, and, as it seems to us, less reasonably, it is to the downfall that Kinder Scout owes its name. Kin–(cin)–dwr–scwd, he tells us, in Cymraeg signifies “High water cataract.”
Keeping to the main line, the original “Sheffield and Manchester,” half an hour carries us to Broadbottom and Mottram–in–Longdendale, where we stop in order to make acquaintance with the lively Etherowe, which here divides Cheshire from Derbyshire, running on to Compstall, where, as above stated, it enters the Goyt. The scenery all the way to the point of confluence is alluring. On the Cheshire side of the stream the slope is occupied in part by Bottoms–hall Wood, through which there is a footway to Werneth Low, and then to Hyde or Woodley, a very pleasant sufficiency for an afternoon. On the Derbyshire side, after crossing a few fields, Stirrup Wood forms a beautiful counterpoise to Bottoms–hall; and when through this we are upon Stirrup–benches, famous for profusion of the Oreads’ fern—that fragrant one so fittingly dedicated to the nymphs who once upon a time danced on green slopes around Diana,
Hinc atque hinc glomerantur Oreades.