The valley is now opening out; to right and left great rock-strewn bluffs bound its almost level bed. Floods are of frequent occurrence here, but they run off the land quickly. I have waked at dawn. Since midnight a storm had raged, and great films of falling rain crashed resoundingly against window and door of our cottage. Outside the level of the dale is occupied by a sullen lake, stretching far toward the mountains; the rain-squalls are ploughing its surface with wide white furrows. The storm ceases suddenly; the cloud-banks trail reluctantly from the fells, revealing a paradise of falling waters. Six hours later the broad acres are showing green and soaked, and the river is back in its channel. Such brief life, though furious, has a flood of the fell lands.
Through the leafless alders lining the ghylls we see, in gushing white, rivulets descending from the unseen moors. On our right Gray Crag heaves up its plainer, grassier shoulder; and next to it is Anchorite’s Breast, where in a shallow cave by the beckside legend says an anchorite from the monastery at Shap dwelt many a year. The monks in this district seem to have been very self-contained in their dealings, and were much misunderstood by the half-pagan, half-Christian Saxons about them. It is stated that the dwellers in the dale refused to furnish the hermit with food. His weary track over the long moor to the abbey can, it is averred, even now be traced.
But to-day, instead of pensive monks, on the wild gray tracts of grass are seen men moving at a run. The dalesman loves a fox-hunt dearly. He is tireless in the pursuit. Miles of open country glide beneath his feet. On the rough crags and moraines his dexterity is marvellous. The hunt is in full cry on the hillside. The hounds are going at a great pace; the men are every moment further and further in the rear. A quick eye might even catch the tiny brown form of the fox running for its very life. For some minutes we watch them sweep along, at first parallel to the dale, then gradually turning up and up the mountainside to its crest. Hound after hound leaps on to the tall wall, halts a brief second, his form outlined against the bright blue sky, then disappears, and faint, long-drawn-out voices are all we have of a mountain fox-hunt.
As we turn away we begin to meet numbers of the chase. They tell us the pack are well up to their fox, that they will hunt him in the next dale, maybe, but unless they kill they will bring him back again. Maybe about Yewbarrow, says one, as he trudges briskly along; about Swinbank, argues another, and takes things more leisurely. Now two men in pink are coming towards us. What a change to eyes full of sombre gray and green is a flash of warm colour! It is the veteran master of the pack and his huntsmen. The dalesmen salute the elder cheerfully. He has a word for all, and a pleasant one, too. He is wiry in build; his genial face is wrinkled. He has doffed black hunting-cap; his hair, cropped short beneath, is silvern. This is the man who for two generations has provided sport in the dales. John Peel was not less deserving of the grand hunting-song than he is. With a courteous salutation he passes us by. Many a time I have thought of and sighed for the splendid hunts he has witnessed both before and since the last ‘greyhound’ fox was killed.
A mile further on the road crosses a short rise caused by an outcropping vein of white felspar. To the right is one of those conical mounds dubbed by dalesmen either ‘ancient fortresses,’ ‘barrows,’ or ‘haycocks,’ formed by the glacial process of denudation and deposit in days long past.
For a couple of hours it has seemed as though we were walking along a level, but from this slight eminence we see that the dale is but as a shelf sloping downwards from the mountains. The bluffs which dominated the view at our starting are now insignificant in the distance, and we look over their tops to a broad, undulating valley. In front of us is the dalehead, a small subvalley, the entrance a narrow ‘gate’ between two converging ribs of mountain, the exit a rugged track winding up rock-strewn braes.
There is but one tenement in sight, an ancient sheep-farm perched quite close to the rocky river-bed. Its buildings are very old; one or two possess floors of trodden earth probably dating back four hundred years. The yeoman who possesses the domain is much respected. Further up the stream than Sacgill is a level strewn with beaches of stone. Here at some time has been a small lake, but the torrents have completely buried it in débris. Their activity is so great that the whole dale has to contribute to the cost of a retaining barrier here. Otherwise in a single winter 10,000 tons of stones would be washed down, the river-bed would be choked for miles, and the stream would run riot down the dale, turning into marshy bogs what are now carefully-drained pastures. The prophecy of ‘Every valley shall be exalted, and every hill brought low,’ was once preached from a dales pulpit. ‘But net in oor day [but not in our time], O Lord!’ fervently ejaculated an aged hearer.
The dalehead, as we travel into it, presents rather a dreary aspect. Even the bogs are gray, not green as on lower heights. A few thin patches of scrubby coppice show on the slopes immediately behind the farm; a little patch of soil near the opening of a deep ghyll is clothed with a large plantation. Gray grass and tangles of rotting bracken are on the braes, but the area of naked rock, scree, and scattered boulders far exceeds these. The whole outlook is barren and forbidding. How can a farmer wrest a living from such a place? How indeed! The sheep-farm is barely remunerative in these days of cheap wool; but mountain mutton is renowned, though the producer benefits little by this.
In about half an hour we reach the choked tarn area. When its dark waters laved the lowermost scree-beds of these steep fells, the dalehead must have made a perfect picture. Even now to our left Goat Scaur raises its grand head nearly 2,000 feet above us, while on our opposite side in one huge cliff the Gray Crag stands almost as high. Both mountains are plenteously splashed with white. On the lower pitches the snow in the deepest gullies are remains of great drifts, but as the eye rises higher the white areas become more numerous; they are connected one with another, and at the top of the brae a long white curling drift resists the spring sunlight. The level beams of eventide shoot over the hills from westward, flushing the snowfields with crimson bars and glorious rosy shadows. At last, by a rough, water-torn road, we reached the summit of the pass, 2,000 feet or so above sea-level,
‘With a tumultuous waste of huge hilltops before us,’