About a mile from the public-house the road leaves the brown region, and descends rapidly to the Swale, crossing where the stream swells in rainy weather to a noisy cataract, and Swaledale stretches away before us, a grand mountain valley, yet somewhat severe in aspect. Gentle, as its name imports, appears misapplied to a rushing stream; but a long course lies before it: past Grinton, past picturesque Richmond, ancient ruins, towers of barons, and cloisters of monks, and to the broad Vale of York, where, calmed by old experience, it flows at Myton gently into the Ure. And not only gentle but sacred, for Swale has been called the Jordan of Yorkshire, because of the multitudinous baptism of the earliest converts therein by Paulinus; “above ten thousand men, besides women and children, in one day,” according to the chronicler, who, perhaps to disarm incredulity, explains that the apostle having baptized ten, sent them into the stream to baptize a hundred, and so multiplied his assistants as the rite proceeded, while he prayed on the shore.
By-and-by we meet signs of inhabitants—a house or two; a few fields of mowing grass; the heaps of refuse at lead-mines, and our walk derives a pleasurable interest from the hourly change, the bleak, barren, and lonely, for the sheltered, the cultivated, and inhabited. More and more are the hill-sides wavy with grass as we descend, field after field shut in by stone fences, and the dalesmen are beginning to mow. The time of the hay harvest has come for the mountains: a month later than in the south. How beautifully the bright green contrasts with the dark purple distances, and softens the features of the dale! And as I looked from side to side, or around to the rear, as the fallen road made the hills seem higher, and saw how much Swaledale has in common with a valley of the Alps, I felt that here the desire for mountain scenery might be satisfied; and I found myself watching for the first field of grain with as much interest as I had watched for vines in the Val Mont Joie.
I overtook a party of lead-miners, boys and men, going home from work. The boys could read; but there was only one of them who really liked reading. “He’s a good quiet boy,” said the father; “likes to set down wi’ his book o’ evenin’s; t’others says they is tired. He can draw a bit, too; and I’d like well to send’n to a good skule; but I only gets two pounds a month, and that’s poor addlings.” And one of the young men wished that digging for lead didn’t make him so tired, for readin’ made him fall asleep, and yet he wanted to get on with his books. “It don’t seem right,” he added, “that a lad should want a bit o’ larnin’ and not get it.” I said a few words about the value of habit, the steady growth of knowledge from only half an hour’s application continued day after day at the same hour, and the many ways of learning offered to us apart from books. The whole party listened with interest, and expressed their thanks when we parted at the hamlet of Stonesdale. The lad thought he’d try. He’d emigrate, only his wage was too low for saving.
If I had the missionary spirit, I would not go to Patagonia or Feejee; but to the out-of-the-way places in my own country, and labour trustfully there to remove some of the evils of ignorance. Any man who should set himself to such a work, thinking not more highly of himself than he ought to think, would be welcomed in every cottage, and become assured after a while, that many an eye would watch gladly for his coming. One of my first tasks should be to go about and pull up that old pedlar’s mischievous tares, and plant instead thereof a practical knowledge of common things.
With unlimited supplies of stone to draw on, the houses of Stonesdale are as rough and solid as if built by Druids. Every door has a porch for protection against storms, and round each window a stripe of whitewash betrays the rudimentary ornamental art of the inmates. A little farther, and coming to the village of Thwaite, I called at the Joiners’ Arms for a glass of ale. The landlord, mistaking my voice for that of one of his friends, came hastily into the kitchen with a jovial greeting, and apparently my being a stranger made no difference, for he sat down and began a hearty talk about business; about his boyhood, when he used to run after the hounds; about his children, and the school down at Muker. I laughed when he mentioned running after the hounds, for, as I saw him, he was, as Southey has it, “broad in the rear and abdominous in the van.” His agility had been a fact, nevertheless. I praised the beer. That did not surprise him; he brewed it himself, out of malt and hops, too; not out of doctor’s stuff. I asked a question about Hawes, to which I was going over the Pass. “Oh!” said he, “it’s terribly fallen off for drink. I used to keep the inn there. A man could get a living in that day by selling drink; but now the Methodists and teetotallers have got in among ’em, and the place is quite ruined.” Manifestly my heavy friend looked at the question from the licensed victualler’s point of view. Concerning the school down at Muker, however he was not uncharitable. ’Twas a good school—a church school. There was a chapel of ease there to Grinton. Mr. Lowther did the preaching and looked after the school, and the people liked his teaching and liked his preaching. He brought the children on well, gals as well as the boys; that he did.
If, reader, you should go to Thwaite, and wish to have a chat with a jolly landlord, enquire for Matty John Ned, the name by which he is known in all the country round; remembering what happened in my experience. For when, late in the evening, I intimated to mine host of the White Hart at Hawes that Mr. Edward Alderson had recommended me to his house, he replied, doubtfully, “Alderson—Alderson at Thwaite do you say?”
“Yes, Alderson at Thwaite: a big man.”
“O-o-o-o-h! You mean Matty John Ned.”
Below Thwaite the dale expands; trees appear; you see Muker about three miles distant, the chief village of Upper Swaledale: still nothing but grass in the fields; and the same all the way to Reeth, ten miles from Muker. There you would begin to see grain. Not far from Thwaite I turned up a very steep, stony road on the right, which leads over the Buttertubs Pass into Wensleydale, and soon could look down on the village, and miles of Swaledale, and the hills beyond. Among those hills are glens and ravines, and many a spot that it would be a pleasure to explore, to say nothing of the lead mines, and the ‘gliffs’ of primitive manners; and any one who could be content with homely head-quarters at Muker or Thwaite might enjoy a roaming holiday for a week or two. And for lovers of the angle there are trout in the brooks.
The ascent is long as well as steep, and rough withal; but the views repay you every time you pause with more and more of the features of a mountain pass. There are about it touches of savage grandeur, and the effect of these was heightened at the time I crossed by a deep dark cloud-shadow which overspread a league of the hills, and left the lower range of the dale in full sunshine. For a while the road skirts the edge of a deep glen on the left; it becomes deeper and deeper; there are little fields, and haymakers at work at the bottom; then the slopes change; the heather creeps down; the beck frets and foams, sending its noise upward to your ear; screes and scars intermingle their rugged forms and variations of colour; a waterfall rushes down the crags; and when these have passed before your eyes you find yourself on a desolate summit.