At any rate, there was no noise to disturb the Sunday quiet when I went forth on the morrow. While passing along the street I noticed many cottagers reading at their doors, and exposing a pair of clean white shirt-sleeves to the morning sun. Turning presently into a road on the left, which rises gently, you get an embowered view of the town, terminated by the soaring arch. Then we come to Hutton Lowcross, a pleasant hamlet, which suggests a thought of the days of old, for it once had an hospital and a Cistercian nunnery. Hutton joined to the name of a village is a characteristic of Cleveland. In one instance—a few miles from this—it helps out an unflattering couplet:
“Hutton Rudby, Entrepen,
Far more rogues than honest men.”
We cross the railway near a station, which, as a cottager told me is “Mr. Pease’s station; built for hisself, and not for everybody;” and take a bridle road leading to the hill. I fell in with a couple of rustics, who were able to enjoy the scenery amid which they had lived for years. They lay under a tree, at a spot open to the prospect down the valley; and as I commended their choice, one replied “I do like to come and set here of a Sunday better than anything else. ’Tis so nice to hear the leaves a-rustlin’ like they do now.” But the view there was nothing to what I should see from the hill-top: there couldn’t be a prettier sight in England than that.
I felt willing to believe them; and a few minutes later strode from the steep, narrow lane, where ferns, foxgloves, wild roses, and elders overhang the way, to the open expanse of Guisborough moors. Here a track runs along the undulating slope to the foot of the hills, which roll away on the left to the wild region of Black-a-moor, with many a pleasant vale and secluded village between, while on the right spreads the cultivated plain, of which, ere long, we shall get a wider view; for now Rosebury Topping comes clear in sight, from gorse-patched base to rocky apex, and your eye begins to select a place for ascent. It is approachable on all sides; no swamp betrays the foot, but the steepness in some places compels you to use hands as well as feet. The morning was already hot, and I was fain to sit down in the belt of bracken above the gorse and breathe awhile, glad to have climbed beyond reach of the flies. From the fern you mount across clean, soft turf to the bare wall of rock which encircles the northern half of the summit, where the breeze of the plain is a brisk wind, cooling and invigorating as it sweeps across. I threw off my knapsack, and choosing a good resting-place, lay down in idle enjoyment of being able to see far enough.
Who that has travelled knows not what an enjoyment it is to recline at length on a hill-top, the head reposing on a cushion of moss, and to have nothing to do but let the eye rove at will over the wide-spread landscape below? Sheltered by the rock, you breathe the coolness of upper air without its rapid chill, and indulge for a while in lazy contemplation. It is the very luxury of out-door existence. Perhaps you are somewhat overcome by the labour of the ascent, and unconsciousness steals gently on you; and a snatch of slumber in such a spot, while the winds whisper of gladness in your ear, and a faint hush floats to and fro among the blades of grass, is a pleasure which can be imagined only by one who beholds at his awaking the blue sky and the broad earth of the great Giver.
At length curiosity prevails. Here we are a thousand and twenty-two feet above the sea—an elevation that sounds small after Switzerland and Tyrol; but a very little experience of travelling convinces one that the highest hills are not those which always command the most pleasing views. Standing on the top of the crag you may scan the whole ring of the horizon, from the sea on the east to the high summits of the west; from the bleak ridges of Black-a-moor to the headlands of Northumberland, seen dimly through the smoky atmosphere of the Durham coal-fields.
Considering, reader, that I may please myself at times, as well as you, I borrow again from our honest friend, whose admiration of the picturesque appears to have equalled his ability to note the useful. “There is,” he says, “a most goodly prospecte from the toppe of thys hyll, though paynefully gayned by reason of the steepnesse of yt.... There you may see a vewe the like whereof I never saw, or thinke that any traveller hath seen any comparable unto yt, albeit I have shewed yt to divers that have paste through a greate part of the worlde, both by sea and land. The vales, rivers, great and small, swelinge hylls and mountaynes, pastures, meadows, woodes, cornefields, parte of the Bishopricke of Durham, with the newe porte of Tease lately found to be safe, and the sea replenyshed with shippes, and a most pleasant flatt coaste subjecte to noe inundation or hazarde make that countrye happy if the people had the grace to make use of theire owne happinesse, which may be amended if it please God to send them trafique and good example of thrifte.” All this is still true; but Tees has now other ports, and Middlesborough, which has grown rapidly as an American town, and the iron furnaces, spread a smoky veil here and there across the landscape, which, when our narrator looked down upon it, lay everywhere clear and bright in the sunshine.
The name of the hill is said to be derived from Ross, a heath or moor; Burg, a fortress; and Toppen, Danish for apex. If you incline to go back to very early days—as the Germans do—try to repeople the rows of basin-like pits which, traceable around the slope of the hill, are, so the students of antiquity tell us, the remains of ancient British dwellings. Were they inhabited when the Brigantes first mustered to repel the Romans? Rebuild the hermitage which, constructed once by a solitary here in the rock, was afterwards known as the smith’s forge or cobbler’s shop; and restore the crevice which, far-famed as Wilfrid’s needle, tempted many a pilgrim to the expiatory task of creeping through the needle’s eye. No traces of them are now left, for the remains which Time respected were destroyed some years ago by quarrymen, and with them the perfect point of the cone.
Rosebury Topping was once talked of as the best site for a monument to the memory of Cook, where it would be seen from his birthplace and for miles around. But another spot was chosen, and looking to the south-east you see the tall, plain column on Easby heights, about three miles distant. It was erected in 1827, at the cost of Mr. Robert Campion, of Whitby. At the foot of the hill, in the same direction, partly concealed by trees, and watered by the river Leven, lies the village of Great Ayton—canny Yatton—where Cook went to school after finishing his course of Mary Walker’s lessons. In the churchyard is a stone, which records the death of Cook’s mother, and of some of his brothers and sisters, supposed to have been wrought by his father, who was a working mason. It is said, however, that the old man was unable to read until the age of seventy-five, when he learned in order that he might have the pleasure of reading the narrative of his son’s voyages of discovery. Of other noteworthy objects in the village are a monument to Commodore Wilson in the church; a Chapel-well of the olden time; and an agricultural school, with seventy-five acres of good land attached, belonging to the Quakers. Farming work and in-doors work are there taught to boys and girls in a thoroughly practical way, carrying out the intentions of the chief promoter, who gave the land and 5000l. to establish the institution.
A few yards below the rocks a spring trickles slowly into a hollow under a stone, but the quantity of water is too small to keep itself free from the weeds and scum which render it unfit for drinking. It can hardly be the fatal spring of the tradition, wherein is preserved the memory of a Northumbrian queen and Prince Oswy, her son. Soothsayers had foretold the boy’s death by drowning on a certain day: the mother, to keep him from harm, brought him to this lofty hill-side early on the threatened day, where, at all events, he would be in no danger from water. Fondly she talked with him for a while and watched his play: but drowsiness stole over her and she fell asleep. By-and-by she woke, and looked hastily round for her darling. He was nowhere to be seen. She flew hither and thither, searching wildly, and at last found him lying dead, with his face in the spring.