The ancient now leant his rod against the bridge to execute some minor repairs, and was about to give me details of a wondrous catch of thirty years ago, when the air darkened and a warning dampness in the breeze sent me to seek shelter among the trees.
When I took the road again, my route was toward the great Burn Moor. The Willan, which I had to cross, is a rivulet of moods. Generally its bed is occupied by a succession of verdure-hid, deep, clear pools, joined by narrow gurgling ribbons of water; but now there issued from its granite dell a mighty surge of sound, and the flickering of a waterfall through the trees behind the cluster of houses called Boot caused me to turn aside. Down a great elbow of rock the rivulet was dashing. Here a creamy spout shot from some hidden cleft clear of the cliff, and crashed to spray on the boulders far below. This protruding slab of mossy rock a thin film of water tardily welled over. The harebell so precariously anchored to that ledge is hidden from sight; perhaps a stalk or two will be plucked away by the rude stream. Yet when Willan retires to seek its wonted way, nodding bells of azure blue will again uprear, a little bespattered with foam, yet perfect and strong, held into that hospitable cleft. But the main fosse is a little to the right. In three leaps it comes down fifty feet, throwing up a spume which is tinted by the sunbeams into a halo of rainbow hue. A few minutes later, as I passed up the steep mountain road, I turned for another look at Eskdale, the home of torrent. Great regiments of larches clothe the southern hills; the other side is festooned in green of fern and grass. From seaward the hills rise bolder and more rugged, with offshooting castles of jagged rocks overstanding the dale, with rifted gullies and gnarled woods where
‘with sparkling foam a small cascade
Illumines, from within, the leafy shade.’
Like a silver streak, the Esk wanders down the centre of the dale, with here and there dwindled cots and farms and fields and kine beside. A duskiness, forerunner of another stormlet, sweeps along, dimming the lustre of water and moist land. The sky is streaked with stretching pennons of rain-cloud, and I—I, with ne’er a cape to protect me—am standing on a bleak fell-track, far from shelter. I am neither hero nor philosopher to accept trials kindly, but I strongly wished to reach Windermere at nightfall, so heeded less the drenching shower. Care for health—the young are proverbially careless; but if, when your clothes are completely saturated, you never allow your body to lose its temperature, a wetting more or less need not appal you. For years used to such inconvenience, I can only add that this theory is also practice with me.
Ere the top of the ascent was reached, the brief splashing shower had rushed on into the mountains. Across the cleft of the dale, right opposite me, from an unseen distance of moorland, a mighty torrent was pouring over the edge of a precipice. This was Birker Force.
‘Resistless, roaring, dreadful, down it comes
From the rude mountain and the mossy wild,
Tumbled through rocks abrupt, and sounding far.’
The air was filled with the varied voices of many waters: gurglings from the near-at-hand springs and runnels; tinklings from the rivulets dropping down narrow rifts in the moor; the rattle of the torrent speeding down the centre of the upland declivity; and a dull, insistent roar carried up to the heights from the Willan cascade, the rock-racked Esk, and it might be from the far-away water-cloud of Birker.