My track across the moor was a bit inconsequent: sheep-tracks and man-tracks, anything trending in the right direction, were followed. Of course, the long tracts of bog had to be avoided—water oozed from them as from a huge sponge. In addition to these places, the whole moor was full of springs. Among the roots of heather were many up-currents, some with orifices six inches square; and their volumes spouted out with force, too, jets nearly a foot high being common. Had not my boots been filled long ago with the drops brushed from heather and bracken, I might have avoided these fountains, but under the circumstances I recked but little. Wide sheets of water were pouring down every slack, and I waded such as they were met. At one point from a pile of boulders I counted fifteen springs within ten feet.
Just as another crash of rain came along I sighted Burnmoor Tarn. An old poacher of my acquaintance holds this water in high esteem; the trout are big and easily caught, he says. I have not tried the place: the fishing is private.
Standing by the darkling waters a splendid view is around. Wastwater Screes raise a green boundary to the left, to the right the ridges rise to Great Howe, and finally to Scawfell. An easy route up the last-named mountain is well in sight. A great pyramid of cloud rests beyond Wastdale, the dusky gulfs of Black Sail and Mosedale alone being seen below it. My route for the present lay straight ahead, over the narrow hause toward Wastdale. Twenty minutes on I am at the summit. A bright blaze of sunshine lights up Wastwater and the great circle of silurian rocks around it. In the level valley the eye first catches the yews, and then the modest gray church. This is the smallest in England. The conundrum and boast of a Wastdalian, when asked his birthplace, is: ‘Ah cum fra whar there’s t’ hee’ist moontain, deepest lake, lilest kirk, an’ t’ biggest leer in aw England', [I come from where there is the highest mountain, the deepest lake, the smallest church, and the biggest liar in all England]. But the sound of a foxhound’s voice, shrill as of a pleased puppy, carries my mind to men rather than views—to Will Ritson and the old Parson. I have a story of these two, not new, and perhaps incomplete, which appertains at least to Wastdale. Many years ago a wandering fox played particular havoc among the flocks. Guns and dogs failing to close his account, one Sunday morning a party of dalesmen assaulted the earth he lay in with terrier and crowbar. However, while they attacked the front, Reynard escaped by a side-channel, and was speeding away for a securer home, when an alarm was raised. Collie and bobtail, hound and terrier, streamed across the hillside in pursuit. The fox headed for Mickledore, and was crossing at great speed the level fields near the church, when a worshipper—this happened in the days of long sermons—taking a mid-service stroll, raised a wild ‘Tallyho!’ and rushed back into the church, shouting: ‘Here’s t’ Ennerdale girt dog chassing for its life.’ The droning homily from the pulpit was instantly lost in the clatter of clogs on the flagged floor, as pell-mell the congregation—men, women, and children—rushed out to join in the pursuit. If the parson sighed at this abandonment of the service, he did it in brief time, for a moment later his surplice was hanging on the pulpit-rail and he far afield, labouring to catch up his parishioners. Down with the fox! then and now, is the watchword of fells shepherding.
Some short distance I descended toward the vale; then, calculating that the time in hand allowed me to take an alternative course over Scawfell Pike, I deflected from the path and faced the wearisome side of Lingmell. As I rose higher my view seaward widened, and beyond the yellow sands of the Cumbrian coast I could see here and there a steamer shaping its course. Of course, the air was preternaturally clear, and even minute points came up sharply. Just as I climbed the last wall, a little man in homespun came along the upper track. I spoke to him, and he told me he was out ‘looking his sheep.’ Many of them had been affected by ‘t’ wicks,’ and he had had an anxious time, accordingly. ‘But,’ he added, ‘it’s nowt to what feeding them in winter time is for clash [wet weather] and hard work.’ I asked him if he had ever been caught in a snowstorm while in charge of sheep. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘and I don’t want to. The fells here are that full of rocks and cliffs that it’s dangerous work groping about in a thick snowshower.’ Remembering an experience of my own not three miles from this, when a squall of January’s whitest enveloped us without a minute’s warning, I agreed. Only good luck brought us out of that incident happily, for every landmark was either deep under snow or hidden by the murkiness prevailing. The shepherd told of searches by lantern-light for missing neighbours; no harm to life or limb had befallen any that he knew of, though the perils had been often great. Sometimes, he said, benighted tourists had to be sought for, but usually such were easily traced.
After walking about half a mile with me, my companion excused himself, saying that his flock lay towards Lord’s Rake, on the other side of the brawling torrent. A few whistles and arm-swayings, and his two dogs were running far away, routing out stragglers from among the rocks and driving an ever-increasing band of sheep forward and upward. I followed the stony track to the top of Lingmell, and across a peat-stained expanse toward the last pitch of Scawfell Pike. A low cloud, distended and black with rain, had swept along and swamped out of sight the region ahead of me. I had reached the edge of the mist, when the thought of keeping level along the hillside struck me. I was now about 2,800 feet above sea-level, within 500 feet of the summit, and my proposed traverse was a new piece of work to me. From the top of the ridge you can see little of this abrupt slope; from the bottom the detail of its facets and slacks is lost.
Huge splinters of stone lay on all sides, fragments which had fallen from above, and over these I clambered. Again and again I sidled along a narrow streaming ledge, steep rock above, a long gap below. Then the cloud began to shed rain in tremendous bursts, and the rocks became slippery. Once or twice I ventured along routes which, though promising at first, became impassable, and I had to get back to my starting-point as I could. When the stormlet was at its strongest there was suddenly from above a sharp rapping sound—like the reports of a Maxim gun—some little distance away. Five seconds or so the sound lasted; there was a brief pause as though the world of rigid stone and driving rain hung in the balance, then a magnificent crash of thunder seemed to make the rock veins start and quiver. The mighty sound came from a lower level, and I heard it re-echoing up the glen to Styehead, with many a backward-flung cadence. The play of lightning through the mist-wreaths was splendid. There was another roll of heaven’s-war drum as I picked my way across upper Piers Ghyll. How that great chine seemed to hold the sound, buffeting it from cliff to cliff, from foaming beck to lowering cloud! At last I judged it meet to turn my face up the hill, hoping to come near the path where the Esk springs from a small marsh. In ten minutes I was within earshot of a party of climbers, surprising them somewhat as I stepped through the curling mist almost into their midst.
IV. A Sketch of Duddonside
At the stepping-stones people on wandering bent generally cross, and, turning upstream, are soon within the mighty Duddon gorge, where founts of green water dash through barriers of piled-up rocks crowned with heather and brambles.
It was early autumn. Through the cool air came the notes of some of the later songsters, on the moors beds of green bracken still waved, but here and there single fronds were turning orange and crimson and yellow. Great bushes of glossy holly began to be noticeable on the crags as the brakes of hazel and whitethorn thinned off their summer foliage. On the bosky hillsides whitish patches of sphagnum were framed with bands of fiery red bog-grass. The dale was resonant to the turmoilings of water, down every ghyll foaming cataracts sprang, while here and there deep floods surged through the level woodlands. The air was marvellously clear, every knot and slack on the mountains showed plainly, and the fresh bright sunshine gave everything, from the caërn on the topmost crag of Wallabarrow to the wind-tangled bracken-beds near our path, a halo of glory. Here and there rabbits frisked to the shelter of burrow or fern, and once the half-choke of a cock-pheasant called his harem together to flee our approach. Along a path marked with pools of mud and water and studded with boulders we plunged into the low screen of oak and ash, and in a few minutes were beside the stepping-stones.