These scenes lie on the Craven side of Ingleborough, and as you wind round his feet, though distantly, by Settle, to the dales, your way is still amongst the loftiest fells, and past continual proofs of subterranean agency, and agency of past violence. You are scarcely past Settle, when by the road-side you see a trough overflowing with the most beautifully transparent water. You stop to look at it, and it shrinks before your eyes six or seven inches, perhaps, below the edge of the trough, and then again comes gushing and flowing over. As you advance, the very names of places that lie in view speak of a wild region, and have something of the old British or Danish character in them. To your left shine the waters distantly of Lancaster Sands, and Morecombe Bay, and around you are the Great Stone of Four Stones, the Cross of Grete, Yorda’s Cave, that is, the cave of Yorda, the Danish sorceress; Weathercote Cave, and Hurtle-pot and Gingle-pot. Our progress over this ground, though early in July, was amid clouds, wind and rain. The black heights of Ingleborough were only visible at intervals through the rolling rack, and all about Weathercote Cave, Hurtle-pot and Gingle-pot were traces of the violence of outbursting waters. We found a capital inn nearly opposite the Weathercote Cave, where one of the tallest of imaginable women presented us with a luncheon of country fare,—oatcake, cheese, and porter, and laid our cloaks and great-coats to dry while we visited the Cave and the Pots. Weathercote Cave is not, as the imagination would naturally suggest to any one, a cave in the side of a hill or precipice, but a savage chasm in the ground, in which you hear the thunder of falling waters. It is just such a place as one dreams of in ancient Thessaly, haunted by Pan and the Satyrs. When you come to the brink of this fearful chasm, which is overhung with trees and bushes, you perceive a torrent falling in a column of white foam, and with a thundering din, into a deep abyss. Down to the bottom of this abyss there is a sloping descent, amongst loose and slippery stones. When you reach the bottom, a cavern opens on your left, into which you may pass, so as to avoid the mass of falling water, which is dashed upon a large black stone, and then is absorbed by some unseen channel. The huge blocks of stone which lie in this cave appear black and shining as polished ebony. I suppose this chasm is at least a hundred feet deep, and yet a few days before we were there, it had been filled to overflowing with water, which had rushed from its mouth with such violence as to rend down large trees around it. What is still more remarkable, at a few hundred yards distance is another chasm of equal depth, and of perpendicular descent, whence the torrents swallowed by the Weathercote Cave during great rains are again ejected with incredible violence. This had taken place, as we have said, a few days before our visit, and though this gulf was now dry again, the evidences of its fury were all around us. Wagon-loads of stones lay at its mouth, which had been hurled up with the torrent of water, all churned or hurtled (whence its name of Hurtle-pot) by its violence into the roundness of pebbles; and trees were laid prostrate, with their branches crushed into fragments, in the track by which the waters had escaped. This track was towards the third singular abyss—Gingle-pot. This gulf had a wider and more sloping mouth than the other, so that you could descend a considerable depth into it, but there you found a black and sullen water, which the people say has never been fathomed. It is said to contain a species of black trout, which are caught, we were told, by approaching the surface of the water with lighted torches by night, towards which they rise. Several country fellows were amusing themselves as we approached with rolling large stones into the abyss, which certainly sunk into the water with an awful sound.
Such is the region which abuts upon the Yorkshire dales. The dales themselves are the intervening spaces betwixt high fells, which run in long ranges one beyond another in a numerous succession. Some of these dales possess a considerable breadth of meadow land, as Wensley-dale, but the far greater number have scarcely more room in the bottom than is occupied by the stream and the public road. Thus every dale seems a little world in itself, being shut in by its high ranges of fell. If you ascend to the ridge of one of these, you find another dale, lying at your feet, with its own little community; were you to cross to the next ridge, you would find another, and so on, far and wide. It is a land of alternating ridge and hollow, ridge and hollow, or in the language of the district, fell and dale, without any intervention of champaign country. Wordsworth’s description in Peter Bell, shows that the poet had been there, as well as the potter.
And he had trudged through Yorkshire dales,
Among the rocks and winding scars;
Where deep and low the hamlets lie,
Beneath their little patch of sky,
And little lot of stars.
Formerly, when there were no roads into these secluded dales, except some shingly ravine, down which the pedestrian, or one of their native ponies could with considerable caution, and sundry strikings of the foot against loose stones, descend, few, except the inhabitants themselves, could visit them, and they then must have possessed a primitive character indeed. Now, however, good roads run through them, and a greater intercourse with the surrounding country must have had its effect, yet I know no other corner of England where still linger so patriarchal a character and such peculiar habits.
George Fox, in his travels far and wide through the realm to promulgate his doctrines, penetrated into these dales. From the top of Pendle-hill in Lancashire, where there is an immense prospect, he tells us in his journal, that he had a vision of the triumphs of his ministry, and of the thousands that would be converted to his peculiar faith. Descending in the strength of this revelation, he marched northward, and speedily found in these dales a primitive race, ready to adopt his opinions and practices, so congenial to a simple and earnest-hearted people. There he repeatedly came, and sojourned long; and the accounts of the extraordinary meetings held, and the effect produced, have few parallels in the histories of religious reformers. There is a little Church-of-England chapel perched on the highest point of Kendal Fells, not far from Sedburgh, which is in the outskirts of this district, called Firbank Chapel, where a thousand people are said to have been collected to hear him, and at which three hundred people were convinced of the truth, to use his own words, at one time,—Francis Howgill, the minister, being one of them. That little chapel is standing yet, perhaps the very humblest fabric in England belonging to the Established Church, old and dilapidated, and situated in one of the most singular and wild situations. There are the identical little windows, at which some of the old people stood within the chapel to listen to the preacher without, thinking it strange to worship anywhere but in a church or chapel. Near the door is a rock, on which he relates that he stood to preach. From its high site you look around over dreary moors, and a vast tract of outstretched country, and wonder whence the people gathered to his ministry. But his fame was that of an apostle all round this country. In Sedburgh churchyard stand two yew trees, under the shade of which, he, on one occasion, preached, drawing all the people out of the church to him. Within the dales themselves he planted several meetings, at Aysgarth, Counterside and Laygate. These meetings still remain, and a considerable number of Friends are scattered through the dales, of a primitive and hospitable character. We went, on the only Sunday which we passed in the dales, to his favourite meeting at Counterside, and could almost have imagined that the remarkable times of his ministry were yet remaining. We found the meeting situated amid a cluster of rustic cottages in pleasant Simmerdale, by Simmerdale Water. The house in which he usually lived during his visits to this valley adjoined the meeting; a true old-fashioned house, where the remains of his oaken bedstead were still preserved; and a very handsome one it must have been, and far too much adorned with the vanity of carving for so plain a man, and so homely a place. But the people were flocking from all sides, down the fells, along the dales, to the meeting, not only the Friends themselves, but the other dalespeople; and we found Mr. Joseph Pease, brother of the M.P., and his lady, from Darlington, addressing a crowded audience. The old times of Fox seemed indeed returned. The preacher’s discourse was one of an earnest and affectionate eloquence, and the audience was of a most simple and unworldly character. Almost every person, man or woman, had a nosegay in hand; nosegays in truth, for they very liberally and repeatedly applied them to the organ whence they are named. The herbs, for they consisted rather of herbs than flowers, were as singular as the appearance of such a host of nosegays itself. Not one of them was without a piece of southernwood, in some instances almost amounting to a bush, and evidently there entitled to its ancient name, “lads’-love and lasses’-delight.” With this was grasped in many a hardy hand, thyme, and alecost, and, in many, mint! No doubt the pungent qualities of these herbs are found very useful stimulants in close and crowded places of worship, and especially under a drowsy preacher, by those whose occupations for the other six days lie chiefly out-of-doors, in the keen air of hills and moors. That such is the object of them was sufficiently indicated by a poor woman who offered us a little bunch of these herbs as we entered the meeting-house, saying with a smile, “they are so reviving.”
Amongst the Friends, are a considerable number of substantial people, who lead here a sort of patriarchal life, with their flocks and herds on the hills around them. And their houses, placed on the slope of the hills, yet not far above the level of the valley, with their ample gardens, must be in the summer months most agreeable abodes. Old English hospitality and kindness are found here in all their strength. We called on several of the resident proprietors, and amongst others Mr. William Fothergill, at Carr-End, since deceased. The garden of this gentleman was a perfect paradise of roses. But the fine old intellectual man himself, retaining beyond his eightieth year, and in this secluded place, all the enthusiasm of youth, the love of books, and aspirations after the spread of knowledge and freedom through the world, was a still more attractive object. He was the descendant of two well-known men, Dr. Fothergill, and Samuel Fothergill, an eminent minister in this society. Talent and liberality of sentiment seem a congenial growth of these dales, for the able and noble-minded Adam Sedgwick is a native of one of them.
To that valley, the beautiful vale of Dent, we may as well betake ourselves, for in describing these retired regions, one portion may with great propriety be taken as a specimen of the whole. Descending therefore from the moors at Newby-Head, we found this southern entrance of Dent-dale steep and narrow. As we proceeded, it wound on before us for several miles, till we beheld the village of Dent lying at its northern extremity. Dent’s-Town, as they call it, has a very Swiss look, with its projecting roofs, and open galleries ascended by steps from the outside. But what strikes you with most surprise in this dale is its high state of cultivation. All the lower part of the dale is divided into small enclosures, rich with grass and summer flowers, and beautifully wooded; and amid the orchards and gardens, peep out houses of various sizes and characters. The hills nearly meet at the bottom, and ascend high, in two long ranges. The upper part, above the enclosures, appears, in some parts, black with heath, but more generally smooth and green, and dotted all over with flocks of sheep and geese. On the wilder parts of these hills graze a great number of cattle, and a shaggy race of ponies peculiar to them, with coats and manes long, and bleached by the wintry winds, till they look at a distance, more like wild bisons than horses. These dun ponies, before the progress of enclosure, used sometimes to follow the tops of the hills right away into Scotland, and have been fetched back from a distance of two hundred miles. When they have shed their wintry coats, and ceased to have such a look
As of the dwellers out of doors;
they often turn out very beautiful creatures, remarkably sure-footed, and highly prized for drawing in ladies’ pony-carriages. But we must descend into the valley: and here one of the most remarkable features is the river. It has all the character of a mountain torrent; huge stones, and masses of gravel everywhere demonstrating the occasional violence of the waters. But what has the most singular effect, its bed is one of solid stone, in some parts black or dark-grey marble, which is chafed and worn by the fury of the stream in floods, in such a manner that it looks itself like a rushing, billowy river, petrified by enchantment. A great part of this bed during the summer is dry, and therefore the more remarkable in its aspect. Here and there you may walk along it for a considerable distance; then again it descends in precipices, and amid blocks of stone of a gigantic character. One of these places is known by the name of Hell’s Cauldron, no doubt, in rainy seasons, a most appropriate name; for the river here, overhung with dark masses of trees, falls over some huge steps of the stony bed into a deep and black abyss, where the rending of the rocks and washing up of heaps of debris, shew with what fury that cauldron boils. But what are still more significant of this fury, are the hollows worn into the very mass of the ledges of rocks over which it passes, one of which, overlooking the abyss, is called the Pulpit, from its form, and in which you may stand. These hollows, which are scooped out with wonderful regularity, appear to be made by the churning and grinding of stones, which get in wherever the softer parts of the rocks give way to the action of the floods. Yet fearful as this Hell’s Cauldron must be when the stream is swollen, we were told that a boy once slipped in, and was carried through it, and washed up on the bank below, unhurt; calling out to his astounded companions—“Here am I! where are you?” The public road runs along the side of the stream, down the valley. This stream is crossed by two queer little foot-bridges, called by the odd names of Tummy and Nelly, or Tummy-Brig and Nelly-Brig, having been built by two persons of these familiar names, to accommodate the inhabitants of the opposite sides of the dale. And truly, as will be shortly evident, a great accommodation they must be, not only in cases of actual business, but in those visitings which go on in the dale.
Not only the people and their houses have an old-fashioned look, but you see continually out-of-doors lingering vestiges of long-past times and ancient usages. There are sledges with which they bring stone and peat from the tops of the fells. I have often wondered at the industry of mountain-people in building up those stone walls, or dykes, as they call them, which you often see running up the mountain sides, to very distant and often very steep places; but crossing these fells, I discovered that the labour was far less than it seemed at first sight. The material has not to be carried up these lofty ascents; it abounds on their summits, and has only to be loosened, and slid down the hill sides on sledges, as they proceed, for they begin to build at the top, and not at the bottom. So their peat for fuel is found in abundance on the wet and spongy tops of these hills, and is dug, and reared on end to dry through the summer, and in the autumn is slid down on sledges. In the Scottish Highlands you see the women bringing the peat from the mountains in large creels, or baskets, on their backs, while their husbands are perhaps angling in the loch below; but here the men generally act a less lordly part; cutting and drying the peat with the help of their boys, and sledging it into the bargain.