A Month in Yorkshire

by Walter White

All the slope between the inn and the fall is covered by a thick plantation of firs, ash, hazel, and a teeming undergrowth, and through this by paths winding hither and thither you have to descend. Now the path skirts precipitous rocks, hung with ivy, now drops gently among ferns to an embowered seat, until at a sudden turn the noise of the fall bursts grandly upon you. A little farther, and the trees no longer screening, you see the deep stony chasm, and the peat-stained water making three perpendicular leaps down a precipice seventy feet in height. It is a striking scene, what with the grim crags, the wild slopes, and the huge masses lying at the bottom and in the bed of the stream; and the impressive volume of sound.

We can scramble down to the very foot of the limestone bluff that projects in the middle, leaving a channel on each side, down one of which a mere thread of water trickles; but in time of flood both are filled, and then the fall is seen and heard in perfection. Now we can examine the smooth water-worn cliff, and see where something like crystallization has been produced by a highly-heated intrusive rock. And here and there your eye will rest with pleasure on patches of moss and fern growing luxuriantly in dripping nooks and crannies.

You see how the water, rebounding from its second plunge, shoots in a broken mass of foam into the brown pool below, and therein swirls and swashes for a while, and then escapes by an outlet that you might leap across, talking to thousands of stones as it spreads itself out in the shallow bed. Standing with your back to the fall, and looking down the stream, the view, shut in by the trees on one side, by a rough grassy acclivity on the other, is one that lures you to explore it, striding along the rugged margin, or from one lump of rock to another.

Then returning to the diverging point in the path, we mount to the top of the fall. Here the scene is, if possible, wilder than below. The rock, as far as you can see, is split into a thousand crevices, and through these the river rushes to its leap. Such a river-bed you never saw before. The solid uprising portions are of all dimensions, and you step from one to the other without first feeling if they are steady. Here and there you climb, and coming to the top of the bluff you can look over and watch the water in its headlong plunge. The brown tinge contrasts beautifully with the white foam; and lying stretched on the sun-warmed rock, your eye becomes fascinated by the swift motion and the dancing spray. Then sit awhile on the topmost point and look up stream, and enjoy the sight of the rapids, and the multitudinous cascades. Though the rocks now lift their heads above water you will notice that all are smoothly worn by the floods of ages. The view is bounded there by a mighty high-backed fell; and in the other direction brown moorlands meet the horizon, all looking glad in the glorious sunshine.

I loitered away two hours around the fall in unbroken solitude, and returned to the inn to breakfast before all the dew was dry. The house was built about twenty-five years ago, said the waitress, when the road was made to connect the lead mines of Alston Moor, in Cumberland, with the highways of Durham. There was not much traffic in the winter, for then nobody travelled but those who were compelled—farmers, cattle-dealers, and miners; but in summer the place was kept alive by numerous visitors to the fall. Most were contented with a sight of High Force; but others went farther, and looked at Caldron Snout and High Cope Nick. Sometimes a school came up for a day’s holiday; they had entertained one the day before—two wagon-loads of Roman Catholic children. True enough, our omnibus had met them returning.

The house looks across the valley to Holwick Fell, and were it not for the trees in front, would have but a bare and, at times, desolate prospect. The whole premises are as clean as whitewash can make them; even the stone fences are whitewashed. The Duke of Cleveland is proprietor: he ought to be proud of his tenants.

How glad the morning seemed when I stepped forth again into the sunshine to travel a few miles farther up the Tees. The road still ascends and curves into the bleak and lonely fells, which stretch across the west of Durham and into Cumberland. In winter they are howling wastes, and in snow-storms appalling, as I remember from painful experience. But in summer there is a monotonous grandeur about them comparable only with that of the ocean.

Just beyond the sixteenth milestone from Alston I got over the fence, and followed a path edging away on the left towards the river. It crosses pastures, little meadows, coarse swampy patches sprinkled with flowers; disappears in places; but while you can see the river or a cottage you need not go astray. There is something about the cottages peculiar to a hill-country: the ground-floor is used as a barn and stable, and the dwelling-rooms are above, approached by a stone stair on the outside. With their walls freshly whitewashed, they appear as bright specks widely scattered in the wilderness; and though no tree adorns or shelters them, they betoken the presence of humanity, and there is comfort in that. And withal they enjoy the purest breezes, the most sparkling water, flowery meadows, and hills purple with heather when summer is over. If you go to the door the inmates will invite you to sit, and listen eagerly to the news you bring. Meanwhile you may note the evidences of homely comfort and apparent contentment. A girl who was pulling dock-leaves—“dockans,” as she called them—told me they were to be boiled for the pig.

Ere long Cronkley Scar comes in sight—a tremendous sombre precipice of the rock known to geologists as greenstone, in which, if learned in such matters, you may peruse many examples of metamorphic phenomena. And hereabouts, as botanists tell us, there are rare and interesting plants to be discovered. The Scar is on the Yorkshire side; but the stream is here so shallow and full of stones, that to wade across would only be an agreeable footbath.

Now the stream makes a bend between two hills, and looking up the vale we see the lower slopes of Mickle Fell—the highest mountain in Yorkshire. We shall perhaps climb to its summit ere the day be many hours older.