A Month in Yorkshire Part 14

I loitered away two hours around the fall in unbroken solitude, and returned to the inn to breakfast before all the dew was dry. The house was built about twenty-five years ago, said the waitress, when the road was made to connect the lead mines of Alston Moor, in c.u.mberland, with the highways of Durham. There was not much traffic in the winter, for then n.o.body travelled but those who were compelled--farmers, cattle-dealers, and miners; but in summer the place was kept alive by numerous visitors to the fall. Most were contented with a sight of High Force; but others went farther, and looked at Caldron Snout and High Cope Nick. Sometimes a school came up for a day's holiday; they had entertained one the day before--two wagon-loads of Roman Catholic children. True enough, our omnibus had met them returning.

The house looks across the valley to Holwick Fell, and were it not for the trees in front, would have but a bare and, at times, desolate prospect. The whole premises are as clean as whitewash can make them; even the stone fences are whitewashed. The Duke of Cleveland is proprietor: he ought to be proud of his tenants.

How glad the morning seemed when I stepped forth again into the suns.h.i.+ne to travel a few miles farther up the Tees. The road still ascends and curves into the bleak and lonely fells, which stretch across the west of Durham and into c.u.mberland. In winter they are howling wastes, and in snow-storms appalling, as I remember from painful experience. But in summer there is a monotonous grandeur about them comparable only with that of the ocean.

Just beyond the sixteenth milestone from Alston I got over the fence, and followed a path edging away on the left towards the river. It crosses pastures, little meadows, coa.r.s.e swampy patches sprinkled with flowers; disappears in places; but while you can see the river or a cottage you need not go astray. There is something about the cottages peculiar to a hill-country: the ground-floor is used as a barn and stable, and the dwelling-rooms are above, approached by a stone stair on the outside. With their walls freshly whitewashed, they appear as bright specks widely scattered in the wilderness; and though no tree adorns or shelters them, they betoken the presence of humanity, and there is comfort in that. And withal they enjoy the purest breezes, the most sparkling water, flowery meadows, and hills purple with heather when summer is over. If you go to the door the inmates will invite you to sit, and listen eagerly to the news you bring. Meanwhile you may note the evidences of homely comfort and apparent contentment. A girl who was pulling dock-leaves--"dockans," as she called them--told me they were to be boiled for the pig.

Ere long Cronkley Scar comes in sight--a tremendous sombre precipice of the rock known to geologists as greenstone, in which, if learned in such matters, you may peruse many examples of metamorphic phenomena. And hereabouts, as botanists tell us, there are rare and interesting plants to be discovered. The Scar is on the Yorks.h.i.+re side; but the stream is here so shallow and full of stones, that to wade across would only be an agreeable footbath.

Now the stream makes a bend between two hills, and looking up the vale we see the lower slopes of Mickle Fell--the highest mountain in Yorks.h.i.+re. We shall perhaps climb to its summit ere the day be many hours older.

From the last dwelling--a farm-house--I mounted the hill, and followed a course by compa.s.s to hit the river above the bend. Soon all signs of habitation were left behind, and the trackless moorland lay before me, overspread with a dense growth of ling, wearisome to walk through. And how silent! A faint sound of rus.h.i.+ng water comes borne on the breeze, and that is all.

Then we come to the declivity, and the view opens to the north-west, swell beyond swell, each wilder in aspect, as it seems, than the other.

And there beneath us glisten the s.h.i.+ning curves of the Tees. The compa.s.s has not misled us, and we descend to the Weel, as this part of the river is called, where for about a mile its channel deepens, and the current is so tranquil that you might fancy it a lengthened pool. We go no higher, but after gazing towards the fells in which the river draws its source, we turn and follow the Weel to a rift in the hill-side. The current quickens, the faint sound grows louder, and presently coming to the brink of a rocky chasm we behold the cataract of Caldron Snout. The Tees here makes a plunge of two hundred feet, das.h.i.+ng from rock to rock, twisting, whirling, eddying, and roaring in its dark and tortuous channel. The foam appears the whiter, and the gra.s.s all the greener, by contrast with the blackness of the riven crags, and although no single plunge equals that at High Force, you will perhaps be more impressed here. You are here shut out from the world amid scenes of savage beauty, and the sense of isolation begets a profounder admiration of the natural scene, and enjoyment of the manifold watery leaps, as you pause at each while scrambling down the hill-side.

About half-way down the fall is crossed by a bridge--a rough beam only, with a rude hand-rail--from which you can see the fall in either direction and note the stony bends of the river below till they disappear behind the hill. From near its source to Caldron the Tees divides Durham from Westmoreland, and in all its further downward course from Yorks.h.i.+re.

Let me sit for an hour by the side of a fall, and watch the swift play of the water, and hear its ceaseless splash and roar, and whatever cobwebs may have gathered in my mind, from whatever cause, are all swept clean away. Serenity comes into my heart, and the calm suns.h.i.+ne pervades my existence for months--nay, years afterwards. And what a joy it is to recall--especially in a London November--or rather to renew, the happy mood inspired by the waterfall among the mountains!

I have at times fancied that the effect of the noise is somewhat similar to that described of narcotics by those who indulge therein. The mind forgets the body, and thinks whatsoever it listeth. Whether or not, my most various and vivid day-dreams have been dreamt by the side of a waterfall.

It seems, moreover, at such times, as if memory liked to ransack her old stores. And now I suddenly recollected Hawkeye's description of the tumbling water at Glenn's Falls, as narrated in _The Last of the Mohicans_, which I had read when a boy. Turn to the page, reader, and you will admire its faithfulness. Anon came a rhyme which a traveller who went to see the falls of the Clyde sixty years ago, tells us he copied from the alb.u.m at Lanark:

"What fools are mankind, and how strangely inclin'd, to come from all places with horses and chaises, by day and by dark, to the Falls of Lanark.

"For good people after all, what is a waterfall?

It comes roaring and grumbling, and leaping and tumbling, and hopping and skipping, and foaming and dripping, and struggling and toiling, and bubbling and boiling, and beating and jumping, and bellowing and thumping-- I have much more to say upon both Linn and Bonniton; but the trunks are tied on, and I must be gone."

Southey, who read everything, perhaps saw this before he wrote his _Fall of Lodore_.

And we, too, must be gone; and now that we have seen

"Where Tees in tumult leaves his source Thund'ring o'er Caldron and High Force,"

we will gather ourselves up and travel on.

But whither? I desired a public-house; but no house of any sort was to be seen--nothing but the scrubby hill-side, and mossy-headed rocks peeping out with a frown at the mortal who had intruded into their dominion. The end of a a meadow, however, comes over the slope on the other side of the bridge; perhaps from the top of the slope something may be discerned. Yes, there was a cottage. I hastened thither, but it proved to be an old tenement now used as a byre. I looked farther, and, about a mile distant, saw two farm-houses. The view had opened into Birkdale, and there, on the left, rose the huge, long-backed form of Mickle Fell, whose topmost height was my next aim, and I could test the hospitality of the houses on the way thither.

We are now in a corner of Westmoreland which, traversed by Birkdale, presents diversified alpine features. The valley is green; the meadows are flowery and dotted with cattle; the hills, stern and high, are browsed by sheep; and Maize Beck, a talkative mountain stream, flows with many a stony bend along the bottom--the dividing line between Westmoreland and Yorks.h.i.+re. There are no trees; and for miles wide the only building is here and there a solitary byre.

My inquiry for dinner at the first of the two houses was answered by an invitation to sit down, and ready service of bread, b.u.t.ter, milk, and cheese. I made a capital repast, and drank as much genuine milk at one sitting as would charge a Londoner's supply for two months. The father was out sheep-shearing, leaving the mother with a baby and four big children at home. But only the eldest boy looked healthy; the others had the sodden, unwashed appearance supposed to be peculiar to dwellers in the alleys of large towns. No wonder, I thought, for the kitchen, the one living room, was as hot and stifling as a Bohemian cottage. The atmosphere was close and disagreeably odorous; a great turf fire burned in the grate, and yet the outer door was kept as carefully shut as if July breezes were hurtful. I tried to make the good woman aware of the ill consequences of bad air; but old habits are not to be changed in an hour. She didn't think that overmuch wind could do anybody good, and it was best for babies to keep them warm. They managed to do without the doctor: only fetched him when they must. There was none nearer than Middleton. Six weeks previously, when baby was born, they had to send for him in a hurry; but Tees was in flood, and Caldron Snout so full that the water ran over the bridge; her boy, however, got across, and rode away the nine miles at full speed on his urgent errand.

What with chairs and tables, racks and shelves, the dresser, the clock, the settee under the window, three dogs, a cat, and a pigeon--to say nothing of the family--the room was almost as crowded as the steerage of a s.h.i.+p. The pigeon--the only one in the dale--had come from parts unknown a few weeks before of its own accord, and was now a household pet, cooing about the floor, and on civil terms with the cat. But the children feared it would die in winter, as they had no peas in those parts, nothing but gra.s.s. Sixty acres of "mowing gra.s.s" and a run for sheep comprise the farm.

While the Ordnance Survey was in Westmoreland, two sappers lodged in the house for months; and the eldest son, an intelligent lad, had much to tell concerning their operations. What pains they took; how many times they toiled to the top of Mickle Fell only to find that up there it was too windy for their observations, and so forth. Sometimes a stranger came and wanted a guide to High Cope Nick, and then he went with his father. Two photographers had come the preceding autumn, and took views of the Nick on pieces of paper with a box that had a round gla.s.s in it; but the views wasn't very good ones.

High Cope Nick, as its name indicates, is a deep notch or chasm in the hills overlooking the low country of Westmoreland about four miles from this Birkdale farm. "It's nigh hand as brant[D] as a wall," said the boy; "you can hardly stand on't." It is one of the scenes which I reserve for a future holiday.

[D] Steep.

The woman could not hear of taking more than sixpence for my dinner, and thought herself overpaid with that. The two boys were going up the fell to look after sheep, so we started together, crossed the beck on stepping-stones, followed by two dogs, and soon began the long ascent.

There is no path: you stride through the heather, through the tough bent, across miry patches, and stony slopes, past swallow-holes wherein streams of water disappear in heavy rains; and find at times by the side of the beck a few yards of smooth sweet turf. The beck is noisy in its freakish channel, yet pauses here and there and fills a sober pool, wherein you may see fish, and perchance a drowned sheep. I saw four on the way upwards, and the sight of the swollen carcases made me defer drinking till nearer the source. I could hardly believe the lads' word that fifteen hundred sheep were feeding on the hill, so few did they appear scattered over the vast surface.

"How many sheep do you consider fair stock to the acre?" asked Sir John Sinclair during one of his visits to the hills.

"Eh! mun, ye begin at wrang end," was the answer. "Ye should ax how many acres till a sheep." Of such land as this the North Riding contains four hundred thousand acres.

Besides the sheep, added the youth, "there's thirty breeding galloways on the hill. There's nothing pays better than breeding galloways. You can sell the young ones a year or year and a half old for eight pounds apiece, and there's no much fash wi' 'em."

When the time came to part, I sat down and tried to give the boys a peep at their home through my telescope. But in vain; they could distinguish nothing, see nothing but a haze of green or brown. On the other hand, they could discern a sheep or some moving object at a great distance which I could not discover at all with the gla.s.s. They turned aside to their flock, and I onwards up the hill. The beck had diminished to a rill, and presently I came to its source--a delicious spring bubbling from a rock, and took a quickening draught.

At length the acclivity becomes gentle, the horizon spreads wider and wider, and we reach the cairn erected by the sappers on the summit of Mickle Fell, 2580 feet above the sea--the highest, as before remarked, of the Yorks.h.i.+re mountains. Glorious is the prospect! Hill and dale in seemingly endless succession--there rolling away to the blue horizon, here bounded by a height that hides all beyond. In the west appears the great gathering of mountains which keep watch over the Lake country, there Skiddaw, there Helvellyn, yonder Langdale Pikes, and the Old Man of Coniston; summit after summit, their outlines crossing and recrossing in picturesque confusion. Conspicuous in the north Cross Fell--in which spring the head-waters of Tees--heaves his brown back in majestic sullenness some three hundred feet higher than the s.h.a.ggy brow we stand on. Hence you can trace the vale of Tees for miles. Then gazing easterly, we catch far, far away the Cleveland hills, and, following round the circle, the blue range of the Hambletons, then Penyghent, Whernside, and Ingleborough, with many others, bring us round once more to the west. Again and again will your eye travel round the glorious panorama.

Mickle Fell is one of the great summits in the range described by geologists as the Pennine chain--the backbone of England. Its outline is characteristic of that of the county; bold and abrupt to the west; sloping gradually down to the east. Hence the walk up from High Force or Birkdale calls for no arduous climbing, it is only tedious. From the western extremity you look down into the vale of the Eden, where the green meadows, the broad fields of grain, dotted with trees and bordered with hedgerows, appear the more beautiful from contrast with the brown tints of the surrounding hills.

Now for the descent. I scanned the great slope on the south for a practicable route, and fixed beforehand on the objects by which to direct my steps when down in the hollows--where scant outlook is to be had. Lowest of all lies what appears to be a light green meadow; beyond it rises a Mickle Fell on a small scale: I will make my way to the top of that, and there take a new departure. All between is a wild expanse of rock and heather. A sober run soon brought me to the edge of a beck, and keeping along its margin, now on one side, now on the other, choosing the firmest ground, I made good progress; and with better speed, notwithstanding the windings, than through the tough close heather. Every furlong the beck grows wider and fuller, and here and there the banks curve to the form of an oval basin smooth with short gra.s.s; favourite haunts for the sheep. The silly creatures take to flight nimbly as goats at the appearance of an intruder, and I lie down to enjoy the solitude. The silence is oppressive--almost awful. Shut in already by the huge hill-sides, I am still more hidden in this hollow.

The beck babbles; the fugitive sheep all unseen bleat timidly; a curlew comes with its melancholy cry wheeling round and round above my head; but the overwhelming silence loses nothing of its force. At times a faint hollow roar, as if an echo from the distant ocean, seems to fill all the air for an instant, and die mysteriously away. It is a time to commune with one's own heart and be still: to feel how poor are artificial pleasures compared to those which are common to all--the simplest, which can be had for nothing--namely, suns.h.i.+ne, air, and running water, and the fair broad earth to walk upon.

Onwards. The beck widens, and rushes into a broad stony belt to join a stream hurrying down the vale from the west. I crossed, and came presently to the supposed bright green meadow. It was a swamp--a great sponge. To go round it would be tedious: I kept straight on, and by striding from one rushy hummock to another, though not without difficulty in the middle, where the sponge was all but liquid, and the rushes wide apart, I got across. Then the smaller hill began: it was steep, and without a break in the heather, compelling a toilsome climb.

However, it induces wholesome exercise. From the top I saw Stainmoor, and as I had antic.i.p.ated, the road which runs across it from Barnard Castle into Westmoreland. I came down upon it about four miles from Brough.

It is a wild region. A line of tall posts is set up along the way, as in an alpine pa.s.s, suggestive of winter snows deep and dangerous. By-and-by we come to a declivity, and there far below we see the vale of Eden, and descend towards it, the views continually changing with the windings of the road. Then a hamlet, with children playing on the green, and geese grazing among the clumps of gorse, and trees, and cultivation; and all the while the hills appear to grow more and more mountainous as we descend. Then Brough comes in sight--the little hard-featured Westmoreland town--whitewashed walls, blue slate roofs, the church a good way off on an eminence, and beyond that, on a gra.s.sy bluff, the ruins of a castle partly screened by trees.

I wanted rest and refreshment, and found both at the _Castle Inn_. An hour later I strolled out to the ruin. The mount on which it stands rises steeply from the Helbeck, a small tributary of the Eden, and terminates precipitously towards the west. The keep still rears itself proudly aloft, commanding the shattered towers, the ancient gateway, the dismantled walls and broken stair, and the country for miles around.

Fallen ma.s.ses lie partly buried in the earth, and here and there above the rough stonework overhangs as if ready to follow. While sauntering now within, now without, you can look across the cultivated landscape, or to the town, and the great slope of Helbeck Fell behind it; and you will perhaps deem it a favourable spot to muse away the hour of sunset, when the old pile is touched with golden light. Thick as the walls are, Time and dilapidations have made them look picturesque. One of the spoilers was William the Lion of Scotland, who finding here a Norman fortress in 1174, took it, along with other Westmoreland strongholds; and was taken himself in the course of the same year at Alnwick. The Rey Cross on Stainmoor--still a monumental site--marked the southern limit of the Scottish princ.i.p.ality of c.u.mberland; hence, the hungry reivers north of Tweed had always an excuse for crossing over to beat the bounds after their manner. Twice afterwards was Brough Castle repaired, and burnt to a sh.e.l.l. The second restoration was carried out in 1659 by the Lady Anne Clifford, Countess Dowager of Pembroke, who recorded the fact on a stone over the entrance, enumerating all her t.i.tles, among which were "High Sheriffess by inheritance of the county of Westmoreland, and Lady of the Honour of Skipton," and ending with a text of Scripture--Isaiah lviii, 12. After the last fire, whosoever would pillaged the castle; the stone bearing the Countess's inscription was taken down, and used in the repair of Brough mill, and the ruins became a quarry, out of which were built sheds and cottages. The large ma.s.ses of masonry, which now lie embedded in the earth, fell in 1792.

According to antiquaries the castle occupies the centre of what had been a Roman station; for Brough was the ancient Verterae, where coins of the emperors have been dug up, and the highway along which the legions marched to and from Carlisle, or the Picts' Wall, is still traceable, known in the neighbourhood as the Maiden Way.

It was a lovely evening. The sun went down in splendour behind the c.u.mbrian hills, and when the radiance faded from the topmost summits, and gave place to dusky twilight, I went back to mine inn.

CHAPTER XIX.

Return into Yorks.h.i.+re--The Old Pedlar--Oh! for the Olden Time-- "The Bible, indeed!"--An Emissary--Wild Boar Fell--Shunnor Fell --Mallerstang--The Eden--A Mountain Walk--Tan Hill--Brown Landscape--A School wanted--Swaledale--From Ling to Gra.s.s--A Talk with Lead Miners--Stonesdale--Work for a Missionary-- Thwaite--A Jolly Landlord--A Ruined Town--The School at Muker-- A Nickname--b.u.t.tertubs Pa.s.s--View into Wensleydale--Lord Wharncliffe's Lodge--Simonstone--Hardraw Scar--Geological Phenomenon--A Frozen Cone--Hawes.

My next morning's route took me back into Yorks.h.i.+re by a way which, leaving the road to Kirkby Stephen on the right, approaches Nine Standards, High Seat, and the other great summits which guard the head of Swaledale. The sight of these hills, and the gradual succession of cultivation and woods by untilled slopes patched with gorse and bracken, impart an interest to the walk. A modern battlemented edifice--Hougill Castle--appears on the left, the residence of a retired physician, and beyond it the wild region of Stainmoor Forest; and here even upon its outskirts we can see how appropriate is the name Stonymoor.

When near the hills I overtook an old pedlar, and slackened my pace to have a talk with him. At times I had fancied my knapsack, of less than ten pounds' weight, a little too heavy; but he, though aged sixty, carried a pack of forty pounds, and when in his prime could have borne twice as much. He took matters easily now; walked slowly and rested often. From talking about schools, he began to contrast the present time with the past. Things were not half so good now as in the olden time, when monasteries all over the land took proper care alike of religion and the poor. Where was there anything like religion now-a-days, except among the Roman Catholics? Without them England would be in a miserable plight; but he took comfort, believing from certain signs that the old days would return--that England would once more acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope.

"Never," I replied; "that's not possible in a country where the Bible circulates freely; and where all who will may read it."

"The Bible!" he answered sneeringly--"the Bible! What's the Bible? It's a very dangerous and improper book for the people to read. What should they know about it? The Church is the best judge. The Bible, indeed!"

Such talk surprised me. I had heard that the Papists employ emissaries of all degrees in the endeavour to propagate their doctrines; but never met with one before who spoke out his notions so unreservedly; and I could have imagined myself thrown back some five hundred years, and the old fellow to be the spokesman in the Somersets.h.i.+re ballad: