Evening drew on apace as we walked out of Keswick by the Castlehead road. The ground, though not frozen, was firm and dry, and the faint breeze carried just a tinge of winter from northward. In the great hollow behind us lights began to twinkle here and there. Lake Bassenthwaite stretched like a sheet of blue steel between the steep slopes of Skiddaw and the brown coppices beneath Barf, while the cloudless western sky still glowed with the waning radiance of sunset.
On the hills lingered day; in the valleys night was nigh. At a corner in the long ascent we paused. A thin blue mist was gradually ascending, extending and joining into a canopy beneath which the lowlands were rapidly lost to view. Two wide fleecy clouds showed where the lakes lay. The vapour rising from the Derwent marked a streak across the level meadows between them; a thousand rills sent up their several lines to make a pall over the wide Newlands Vale, while a reek-like smoke rose from where Greta fretted over its deep rocky course beneath Latrigg. Ere we finally turned away, our eyes had wandered for some minutes over a continuous, slowly-moving sea of cloud, upon which the solid fells and precipitous crags seemed to be floating.
In half an hour we had crossed the ridge of Castlerigg. Through the leafless hedgerows bounding our track to the right a series of dark summits approached us closely. The last glare of day had left the sky, and above these rugged heights shone a few of the brighter lamps of heaven. A dull cloak of vapour occupied the hollowness in front, with the stumpy Naddle fell standing islandwise, for beyond it could be seen the night mists o’erhanging St. John’s Vale. To our left Blencathra was the most prominent mountain, its huge mass and sharp, broken contour showing to great advantage in the starlight, while along the eastern horizon stood the leviathan Helvellyn range, some five miles away.
A pale primrose light ran along their topmost ridge, flushing the sky so that for a space the sparkling stars could not be seen. The moon, we knew, was about to rise; indeed, we had chosen this night for a stroll because continuous light would illumine our way. It was grand walking along that hardened road, watching for rifts in the drifting mist above us, giving us brief glimpses of the brightening quarter of the sky. But we were within the shade of the mighty mountains before the moment arrived when the moon would appear over Crossfell, and flood with bright, uncertain light the upper world of mountains. But instead of this spectacle we watched, as we groped up the pony-track in the semi-darkness, the light touch the summits, and then the narrow ‘edges,’ or ridge-approaches, to Blencathra, making every boulder and cranny on the eastward side visible, accentuating the steepness and ruggedness by leaving the western slopes in utter darkness.
Perhaps five minutes’ walk below the crest of the pass we stopped to view the scene at leisure, and to regain our breath for the brief final ascent. To northward a great ridge of mountains, furrowed with dark ghylls and decked with great rock-faces and beds of scree; beyond, the uncertain glimmer of lakes caught through riven masses of mist; still further away (to westward), a sea of blue mountain-tops. To the right of these, broad moors and craggy fells, shadowy glens and sparkling tarns, with here and there a twinkling rivulet. But the finest scene of all was a crag deep beneath our feet, seemingly
‘with airy turrets crowned,
Buttress, and rampire’s circling bound,
And mighty keep and tower.’
With the level fleeces of mist kissing its lowest wall of slabs, it seemed a veritable castle suspended in mid-air, yet so real that we seemed to listen for the challenging blast of an Arthur’s horn to shake the echoes of the hills upon which the solid pile of gray would once again rouse itself to life and light. But even in this hour of moonlit witchery our senses would not play us false, and carry us back in spirit to the fabled days of old.
We turned in silence to resume our journey, yet it was not with cold we drew that sharp breath. For on the bright skyline above us horses and men were moving. Knights-errant? No, they were not clad in glistering mail from top to toe, nor carried they the bows and spears of the men of the Border raids. No, they were peaceful farmers of Legburthwaite, returning from a sheep-fair in another vale. We greeted them warmly—Nature at its loveliest, as we see it to-night, yet makes a man feel lonesome—and after a few words they passed on. But for long their occasional voices and the ringing of the horseshoes on the stony track were companionable sounds.