“How many sheep do you consider fair stock to the acre?” asked Sir John Sinclair during one of his visits to the hills.
“Eh! mun, ye begin at wrang end,” was the answer. “Ye should ax how many acres till a sheep.” Of such land as this the North Riding contains four hundred thousand acres.
Besides the sheep, added the youth, “there’s thirty breeding galloways on the hill. There’s nothing pays better than breeding galloways. You can sell the young ones a year or year and a half old for eight pounds apiece, and there’s no much fash wi’ ’em.”
When the time came to part, I sat down and tried to give the boys a peep at their home through my telescope. But in vain; they could distinguish nothing, see nothing but a haze of green or brown. On the other hand, they could discern a sheep or some moving object at a great distance which I could not discover at all with the glass. They turned aside to their flock, and I onwards up the hill. The beck had diminished to a rill, and presently I came to its source—a delicious spring bubbling from a rock, and took a quickening draught.
At length the acclivity becomes gentle, the horizon spreads wider and wider, and we reach the cairn erected by the sappers on the summit of Mickle Fell, 2580 feet above the sea—the highest, as before remarked, of the Yorkshire mountains. Glorious is the prospect! Hill and dale in seemingly endless succession—there rolling away to the blue horizon, here bounded by a height that hides all beyond. In the west appears the great gathering of mountains which keep watch over the Lake country, there Skiddaw, there Helvellyn, yonder Langdale Pikes, and the Old Man of Coniston; summit after summit, their outlines crossing and recrossing in picturesque confusion. Conspicuous in the north Cross Fell—in which spring the head-waters of Tees—heaves his brown back in majestic sullenness some three hundred feet higher than the shaggy brow we stand on. Hence you can trace the vale of Tees for miles. Then gazing easterly, we catch far, far away the Cleveland hills, and, following round the circle, the blue range of the Hambletons, then Penyghent, Whernside, and Ingleborough, with many others, bring us round once more to the west. Again and again will your eye travel round the glorious panorama.
Mickle Fell is one of the great summits in the range described by geologists as the Pennine chain—the backbone of England. Its outline is characteristic of that of the county; bold and abrupt to the west; sloping gradually down to the east. Hence the walk up from High Force or Birkdale calls for no arduous climbing, it is only tedious. From the western extremity you look down into the vale of the Eden, where the green meadows, the broad fields of grain, dotted with trees and bordered with hedgerows, appear the more beautiful from contrast with the brown tints of the surrounding hills.
Now for the descent. I scanned the great slope on the south for a practicable route, and fixed beforehand on the objects by which to direct my steps when down in the hollows—where scant outlook is to be had. Lowest of all lies what appears to be a light green meadow; beyond it rises a Mickle Fell on a small scale: I will make my way to the top of that, and there take a new departure. All between is a wild expanse of rock and heather. A sober run soon brought me to the edge of a beck, and keeping along its margin, now on one side, now on the other, choosing the firmest ground, I made good progress; and with better speed, notwithstanding the windings, than through the tough close heather. Every furlong the beck grows wider and fuller, and here and there the banks curve to the form of an oval basin smooth with short grass; favourite haunts for the sheep. The silly creatures take to flight nimbly as goats at the appearance of an intruder, and I lie down to enjoy the solitude. The silence is oppressive—almost awful. Shut in already by the huge hill-sides, I am still more hidden in this hollow. The beck babbles; the fugitive sheep all unseen bleat timidly; a curlew comes with its melancholy cry wheeling round and round above my head; but the overwhelming silence loses nothing of its force. At times a faint hollow roar, as if an echo from the distant ocean, seems to fill all the air for an instant, and die mysteriously away. It is a time to commune with one’s own heart and be still: to feel how poor are artificial pleasures compared to those which are common to all—the simplest, which can be had for nothing—namely, sunshine, air, and running water, and the fair broad earth to walk upon.
Onwards. The beck widens, and rushes into a broad stony belt to join a stream hurrying down the vale from the west. I crossed, and came presently to the supposed bright green meadow. It was a swamp—a great sponge. To go round it would be tedious: I kept straight on, and by striding from one rushy hummock to another, though not without difficulty in the middle, where the sponge was all but liquid, and the rushes wide apart, I got across. Then the smaller hill began: it was steep, and without a break in the heather, compelling a toilsome climb. However, it induces wholesome exercise. From the top I saw Stainmoor, and as I had anticipated, the road which runs across it from Barnard Castle into Westmoreland. I came down upon it about four miles from Brough.
It is a wild region. A line of tall posts is set up along the way, as in an alpine pass, suggestive of winter snows deep and dangerous. By-and-by we come to a declivity, and there far below we see the vale of Eden, and descend towards it, the views continually changing with the windings of the road. Then a hamlet, with children playing on the green, and geese grazing among the clumps of gorse, and trees, and cultivation; and all the while the hills appear to grow more and more mountainous as we descend. Then Brough comes in sight—the little hard-featured Westmoreland town—whitewashed walls, blue slate roofs, the church a good way off on an eminence, and beyond that, on a grassy bluff, the ruins of a castle partly screened by trees.
I wanted rest and refreshment, and found both at the Castle Inn. An hour later I strolled out to the ruin. The mount on which it stands rises steeply from the Helbeck, a small tributary of the Eden, and terminates precipitously towards the west. The keep still rears itself proudly aloft, commanding the shattered towers, the ancient gateway, the dismantled walls and broken stair, and the country for miles around. Fallen masses lie partly buried in the earth, and here and there above the rough stonework overhangs as if ready to follow. While sauntering now within, now without, you can look across the cultivated landscape, or to the town, and the great slope of Helbeck Fell behind it; and you will perhaps deem it a favourable spot to muse away the hour of sunset, when the old pile is touched with golden light. Thick as the walls are, Time and dilapidations have made them look picturesque. One of the spoilers was William the Lion of Scotland, who finding here a Norman fortress in 1174, took it, along with other Westmoreland strongholds; and was taken himself in the course of the same year at Alnwick. The Rey Cross on Stainmoor—still a monumental site—marked the southern limit of the Scottish principality of Cumberland; hence, the hungry reivers north of Tweed had always an excuse for crossing over to beat the bounds after their manner. Twice afterwards was Brough Castle repaired, and burnt to a shell. The second restoration was carried out in 1659 by the Lady Anne Clifford, Countess Dowager of Pembroke, who recorded the fact on a stone over the entrance, enumerating all her titles, among which were “High Sheriffess by inheritance of the county of Westmoreland, and Lady of the Honour of Skipton,” and ending with a text of Scripture—Isaiah lviii, 12. After the last fire, whosoever would pillaged the castle; the stone bearing the Countess’s inscription was taken down, and used in the repair of Brough mill, and the ruins became a quarry, out of which were built sheds and cottages. The large masses of masonry, which now lie embedded in the earth, fell in 1792.