From the last dwelling—a farm-house—I mounted the hill, and followed a course by compass to hit the river above the bend. Soon all signs of habitation were left behind, and the trackless moorland lay before me, overspread with a dense growth of ling, wearisome to walk through. And how silent! A faint sound of rushing water comes borne on the breeze, and that is all.
Then we come to the declivity, and the view opens to the north-west, swell beyond swell, each wilder in aspect, as it seems, than the other. And there beneath us glisten the shining curves of the Tees. The compass has not misled us, and we descend to the Weel, as this part of the river is called, where for about a mile its channel deepens, and the current is so tranquil that you might fancy it a lengthened pool. We go no higher, but after gazing towards the fells in which the river draws its source, we turn and follow the Weel to a rift in the hill-side. The current quickens, the faint sound grows louder, and presently coming to the brink of a rocky chasm we behold the cataract of Caldron Snout. The Tees here makes a plunge of two hundred feet, dashing from rock to rock, twisting, whirling, eddying, and roaring in its dark and tortuous channel. The foam appears the whiter, and the grass all the greener, by contrast with the blackness of the riven crags, and although no single plunge equals that at High Force, you will perhaps be more impressed here. You are here shut out from the world amid scenes of savage beauty, and the sense of isolation begets a profounder admiration of the natural scene, and enjoyment of the manifold watery leaps, as you pause at each while scrambling down the hill-side.
About half-way down the fall is crossed by a bridge—a rough beam only, with a rude hand-rail—from which you can see the fall in either direction and note the stony bends of the river below till they disappear behind the hill. From near its source to Caldron the Tees divides Durham from Westmoreland, and in all its further downward course from Yorkshire.
Let me sit for an hour by the side of a fall, and watch the swift play of the water, and hear its ceaseless splash and roar, and whatever cobwebs may have gathered in my mind, from whatever cause, are all swept clean away. Serenity comes into my heart, and the calm sunshine pervades my existence for months—nay, years afterwards. And what a joy it is to recall—especially in a London November—or rather to renew, the happy mood inspired by the waterfall among the mountains!
I have at times fancied that the effect of the noise is somewhat similar to that described of narcotics by those who indulge therein. The mind forgets the body, and thinks whatsoever it listeth. Whether or not, my most various and vivid day-dreams have been dreamt by the side of a waterfall.
It seems, moreover, at such times, as if memory liked to ransack her old stores. And now I suddenly recollected Hawkeye’s description of the tumbling water at Glenn’s Falls, as narrated in The Last of the Mohicans, which I had read when a boy. Turn to the page, reader, and you will admire its faithfulness. Anon came a rhyme which a traveller who went to see the falls of the Clyde sixty years ago, tells us he copied from the album at Lanark:
“What fools are mankind,
and how strangely inclin’d,
to come from all places
with horses and chaises,
by day and by dark,
to the Falls of Lanark.
“For good people after all,
what is a waterfall?
It comes roaring and grumbling,
and leaping and tumbling,
and hopping and skipping,
and foaming and dripping,
and struggling and toiling,
and bubbling and boiling,
and beating and jumping,
and bellowing and thumping—
I have much more to say upon
both Linn and Bonniton;
but the trunks are tied on,
and I must be gone.”
Southey, who read everything, perhaps saw this before he wrote his Fall of Lodore.
And we, too, must be gone; and now that we have seen