“——grassy slope which seesThe Greta flow to meet the Tees:”
“——grassy slope which seesThe Greta flow to meet the Tees:”
and farther, where
“South of the gate, an arrow flight,Two mighty elms their limbs unite,As if a canopy to spreadO’er the lone dwelling of the dead;For their huge boughs in arches bentAbove a massive monument,Carved o’er in ancient Gothic wise,With many a scutcheon and device.”
“South of the gate, an arrow flight,Two mighty elms their limbs unite,As if a canopy to spreadO’er the lone dwelling of the dead;For their huge boughs in arches bentAbove a massive monument,Carved o’er in ancient Gothic wise,With many a scutcheon and device.”
You will long to lengthen your hours into days for wanderings in this lovely neighbourhood. You will be unwilling to turn from the view at Mortham Tower—one of the old border peels, or fortresses on a small scale—or that which charmsyou from the Dairy Bridge. Then if the risk of losing your way does not deter, you may ramble to “Brignall Banks” and Scargill, having the river for companion most part of the way. And should you be minded to pursue the road through Richmondshire to Richmond, the village and ruins of Ravensworth will remind you of
“The Baron of Ravensworth prances in pride,And he views his domains upon Arkindale side.The mere for his net and the land for his game,The chase for the wild, and the park for the tame;Yet the fish of the lake, and the door of the vale,Are less free to Lord Dacre than Allen-a-Dale!”
“The Baron of Ravensworth prances in pride,And he views his domains upon Arkindale side.The mere for his net and the land for his game,The chase for the wild, and the park for the tame;Yet the fish of the lake, and the door of the vale,Are less free to Lord Dacre than Allen-a-Dale!”
Or, if inspired by a deeper sentiment, you prefer a pilgrimage to a spot of hallowed memory to every Englishman, choose the river-side path to Wycliffe, and see how ever new beauties enchant the way, and say on arrival if ever you saw a prettier village church or a more charming environment. Shut in by woods and hills here, as some writers show, is the birthplace of John Wycliffe, to whom freedom of conscience is perhaps more indebted than to Luther. One may believe that Nature herself desires to preserve from desecration the cradle of him who opened men’s hearts and eyes to see and understand the truth in its purity; cleansed from the adulterations of priestcraft; stripped of all the blinding cheats of papistry; who died faithful to the truth for which he had dared to live; who bequeathed that truth to us, and with God’s blessing we will keep it alive and unblemished, using it manfully as a testimony against all lies and shams whatsoever and wheresoever they may be found.
The church was restored, as one may judge, in a loving spirit in 1850. It contains a few interesting antiquities, and is fraught with memories of the Wycliffes. One of the brasses records the death of the last of the family. Sir Antonio a-More’s portrait of the great Reformer still hangs in the rectory, where it has been treasured for many generations.
You may return from this pilgrimage by the way you went, or walk on through Ovington to Winston, and there take the train to Barnard Castle. I preferred the banks of Tees, for their attractions are not soon exhausted. One of the houses at Greta, which was a famous hostelry in the days of stage-coaches, is now a not happy-looking farm-house. It has seen sore changes. Once noise and activity, and unscrupulousprofits, when the compact vehicles with the four panting horses rattled up to the door at all hours of the day or night, conveying passengers from London to Edinburgh. Now, a silence seldom disturbed save by the river’s voice, and time for reflection, and leisure to look across to its neighbour, wherein the wayfarer or angler may still find rest and entertainment. From Greta Bridge to Boroughbridge was considered the best bit of road in all the county. Now it is encroached on by grass, and the inns which are not shut up look altogether dejected, especially that one where the dining-room has been converted into a stable.
If you have read the ballad ofThe Felon Sow, we will remember it while repassing the park:
“She was mare than other three,The grisliest beast that e’er might be,Her head was great and gray:She was bred in Rokeby wood,There were few that thither goed,That came on live away.“Her walk was endlong Greta side,There was no bren that durst her bide,That was froe heaven to hell;Nor ever man that had that might,That ever durst come in her sight,Her force it was so fell.“If ye will any more of this,In the Fryers of Richmond ’tisIn parchment good and fine;And how Fryar Middleton that was so kend,At Greta Bridge conjured a feindIn likeness of a swine.”
“She was mare than other three,The grisliest beast that e’er might be,Her head was great and gray:She was bred in Rokeby wood,There were few that thither goed,That came on live away.
“Her walk was endlong Greta side,There was no bren that durst her bide,That was froe heaven to hell;Nor ever man that had that might,That ever durst come in her sight,Her force it was so fell.
“If ye will any more of this,In the Fryers of Richmond ’tisIn parchment good and fine;And how Fryar Middleton that was so kend,At Greta Bridge conjured a feindIn likeness of a swine.”
I got back to Barnard Castle in time for the omnibus, which starts at half-past five for Middleton-in-Teesdale, nine miles distant on the road to the hills. I was the only passenger, and taking my seat by the side of the driver, found him very willing to talk. The road ascends immediately after crossing the bridge to a finely-wooded district, hill and dale, rich in oak, ash, and beech. Deepdale beck yawns on the left, and every mile opens fresh enjoyment to the eye, and revives associations. Lartington is a pretty village, which hears night and morn and all day long the tremulous voice of innumerable leaves. “Them’s all Roman Catholics there,” said the driver, as we left it behind; and by-and-by, when we came to Cotherstone—Cuthbert’s Town—“Here ’tis nothin’ but cheese andQuakers.” There is, however, something else, for here it was
“——the Northmen came,Fix’d on each vale a Runic name,Rear’d high their altar’s rugged stone,And gave their gods the land they won.Then, Balder, one bleak garth was thine,And one sweet brooklet’s silver line,And Woden’s Croft did title gainFrom the stern Father of the Slain;But to the Monarch of the Mace,That held in fight the foremost place,To Odin’s son, and Sifia’s spouse,Near Stratforth high they paid their vows,Remembered Thor’s victorious fame,And gave the dell the Thunderer’s name.”
“——the Northmen came,Fix’d on each vale a Runic name,Rear’d high their altar’s rugged stone,And gave their gods the land they won.Then, Balder, one bleak garth was thine,And one sweet brooklet’s silver line,And Woden’s Croft did title gainFrom the stern Father of the Slain;But to the Monarch of the Mace,That held in fight the foremost place,To Odin’s son, and Sifia’s spouse,Near Stratforth high they paid their vows,Remembered Thor’s victorious fame,And gave the dell the Thunderer’s name.”
A delightful day might be spent hereabouts in exploring the glen of the Balder, and the romantic scenery where it flows into Tees; the Hagg crowned by fragments of a stronghold of the Fitzhughs; and the grand rock on the river’s brink known as Pendragon Castle. The whole region for miles around was once thickly covered by forest.
The pace is sober, for some of the hills are steep. We come to Romaldkirk, and the folk, as everywhere else along the road, step from their houses to inquire for parcels or replies to messages, and the driver has a civil word for all, and discharges his commissions promptly. He is an important man in the dale, the roving link between the villagers and the town—“Barn’d Cas’l’,” as they say, slurring it into two syllables. It does one good to see with how much good-nature the service can be performed.
Hill after hill succeeds, the woods are left behind, the country opens bare and wild, rolling away to the dark fells that look stern in the distance. Big stones bestrew the slopes; here and there a cottage seems little better than a pile of such stones covered with slabs of slate or coarse thatch. “Poorish wheat hereabouts,” says the driver, as he points to the pale green fields. The farms vary in size from seventy to one hundred and fifty acres; and he thinks it better to grow grass than grain. Then we come in sight of Middleton, and presently he pulls up, while a boy and girl get inside, and he tells me they are his children, who have come out half a mile to meet him.
Middleton, with its eighteen hundred inhabitants, has the appearance of a little metropolis. There are inns and shops which betoken an active trade, maintained probably by thelead mines in the neighbourhood. I did not tarry, for we had spent two hours on the journey, and I wished to sleep at theHigh Force Inn, nearly five miles farther. We are still on the Durham side of the Tees, with the river now in sight, winding along its shallow, stony bed. The road is an almost continuous ascent, whereby the landscape appears to widen, and every minute the shadows grow broader and darker across the vale. At last the sun drops behind the hill-top, and the lights playing on the summits of the fells deepen into purple, umber, and black, darkest where the slopes and ridges intersect. Cliffs topped with wood break through the acclivities on the left, and here and there plantations of spruce and larch impart a sense of shelter. Every step makes us feel that we are approaching a region where Nature partakes more of the stern than the gentle.
There is room for improvement. I interrupted three boys in their pastime of pelting swallows, to examine them in reading; but they only went “whiles to skule,” and only one could read, and that very badly, in the “Testyment.”
I left Winch Bridge and the cascade which it bestrides about three miles from Middleton, unvisited, for I was tired with much rambling. The clean white front ofHigh Force Inngleaming at last through the twilight was a welcome sight; and not less so the excellent tea, which was quickly set before me. Cleanliness prevails, and unaffected civility; and the larder, though in a lone spot a thousand feet above the sea, contributes without stint to the hungry appetite.
It happened that I was the only guest: hence nothing disturbed the tranquil hour. Ere long I was looking from my chamber window on the dim outlines of the hills, and the thick wood below that intercepts the view of the valley beneath. Then I became aware of a solemn roar—the voice of High Force in its ceaseless plunge. Fitfully it came at times, now fuller, now weaker, as the night breeze rose and fell, and the tree-tops whispered in harmony therewith.
I listened awhile, sensible of a charm in the sound of falling water; then pushing the sash to its full height, the sound still reached me on the pillow. Strange fancies came with it: now the river seemed to utter sonorous words; anon the hills talked dreamily one with another, and the distant sea sent up a reply; and then all became vague—and I slept the sleep of the weary.
Early Morn—High Force—Rock and Water—A Talk with the Waitress—Hills and Cottages—Cronkley Scar—The Weel—Caldron Snout—Soothing Sound—Scrap from an Album—View into Birkdale—A Quest for Dinner—A Westmoreland Farm—Household Matters—High Cope Nick—Mickle Fell—The Boys’ Talk—The Hill-top—Glorious Prospect—A Descent—Solitude and Silence—A Moss—Stainmore—Brough—The Castle Ruin—Reminiscences.
The next day dawned, and a happy awaking was mine, greeted by the same rushing voice, no longer solemn and mysterious, but chanting, as one might imagine, a morning song of praise. I looked out, and saw with pleasurable surprise the fall full in view from the window: a long white sheet of foam, glistening in the early sunbeams.
All the slope between the inn and the fall is covered by a thick plantation of firs, ash, hazel, and a teeming undergrowth, and through this by paths winding hither and thither you have to descend. Now the path skirts precipitous rocks, hung with ivy, now drops gently among ferns to an embowered seat, until at a sudden turn the noise of the fall bursts grandly upon you. A little farther, and the trees no longer screening, you see the deep stony chasm, and the peat-stained water making three perpendicular leaps down a precipice seventy feet in height. It is a striking scene, what with the grim crags, the wild slopes, and the huge masses lying at the bottom and in the bed of the stream; and the impressive volume of sound.
We can scramble down to the very foot of the limestone bluff that projects in the middle, leaving a channel on each side, down one of which a mere thread of water trickles; but in time of flood both are filled, and then the fall is seen and heard in perfection. Now we can examine the smooth water-worn cliff, and see where something like crystallization hasbeen produced by a highly-heated intrusive rock. And here and there your eye will rest with pleasure on patches of moss and fern growing luxuriantly in dripping nooks and crannies.
You see how the water, rebounding from its second plunge, shoots in a broken mass of foam into the brown pool below, and therein swirls and swashes for a while, and then escapes by an outlet that you might leap across, talking to thousands of stones as it spreads itself out in the shallow bed. Standing with your back to the fall, and looking down the stream, the view, shut in by the trees on one side, by a rough grassy acclivity on the other, is one that lures you to explore it, striding along the rugged margin, or from one lump of rock to another.
Then returning to the diverging point in the path, we mount to the top of the fall. Here the scene is, if possible, wilder than below. The rock, as far as you can see, is split into a thousand crevices, and through these the river rushes to its leap. Such a river-bed you never saw before. The solid uprising portions are of all dimensions, and you step from one to the other without first feeling if they are steady. Here and there you climb, and coming to the top of the bluff you can look over and watch the water in its headlong plunge. The brown tinge contrasts beautifully with the white foam; and lying stretched on the sun-warmed rock, your eye becomes fascinated by the swift motion and the dancing spray. Then sit awhile on the topmost point and look up stream, and enjoy the sight of the rapids, and the multitudinous cascades. Though the rocks now lift their heads above water you will notice that all are smoothly worn by the floods of ages. The view is bounded there by a mighty high-backed fell; and in the other direction brown moorlands meet the horizon, all looking glad in the glorious sunshine.
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 Cumberland, with the highways of Durham. There was not much traffic in the winter, for then nobody 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 contentedwith 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 sunshine 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 Cumberland. 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, coarse 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 perusemany examples of metamorphic phenomena. And hereabouts, as botanists tell us, there are rare and interesting plants to be discovered. The Scar is on the Yorkshire 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 Yorkshire. 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 compass 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 rushing 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 shining curves of the Tees. The compass 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, dashing from rock to rock, twisting, whirling, eddying, and roaring in its dark and tortuous channel. The foam appears the whiter, and the grass 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 ofthe 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 Yorkshire.
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 sunshine 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 inThe 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 album at Lanark:
“What fools are mankind,and how strangely inclin’d,to come from all placeswith 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 uponboth Linn and Bonniton;but the trunks are tied on,and I must be gone.”
“What fools are mankind,and how strangely inclin’d,to come from all placeswith 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 uponboth Linn and Bonniton;but the trunks are tied on,and I must be gone.”
Southey, who read everything, perhaps saw this before he wrote hisFall of Lodore.
And we, too, must be gone; and now that we have seen
“Where Tees in tumult leaves his sourceThund’ring o’er Caldron and High Force,”
“Where Tees in tumult leaves his sourceThund’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 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 Yorkshire. 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, butter, 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 theill 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 ship. 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 grass. Sixty acres of “mowing grass” 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 glass 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.
[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, followedby 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 glass. 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 Yorkshire 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 picturesqueconfusion. 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 shaggy 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 grass; 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 wheelinground 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, sunshine, 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 anticipated, 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 pass, 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 grassy bluff, the ruins of a castle partly screened by trees.
I wanted rest and refreshment, and found both at theCastle 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 dismantledwalls and broken stair, and the country for miles around. Fallen masses 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 principality of Cumberland; 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 shell. 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 titles, 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 masses 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 Verteræ, 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 Cumbrian hills, and when the radiance faded from the topmost summits, and gave place to dusky twilight, I went back to mine inn.
Return into Yorkshire—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 Grass—A Talk with Lead Miners—Stonesdale—Work for a Missionary—Thwaite—A Jolly Landlord—A Ruined Town—The School at Muker—A Nickname—Buttertubs Pass—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 Yorkshire 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 thatthe 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 Somersetshire ballad:
“Chill tell thee what good vellowe,Before the vriers went hence,A bushell of the best wheateWas zold for vourteen pence,And vorty egges a penny,That were both good and newe:And this che zay my zelf have zeene,And yet ich am no Jewe.“Ich care not for the bible booke,’Tis too big to be true.Our blessed Ladyes psalterZhall for my money goe;Zuch pretty prayers, as therein bee,The bible cannot zhowe.”
“Chill tell thee what good vellowe,Before the vriers went hence,A bushell of the best wheateWas zold for vourteen pence,And vorty egges a penny,That were both good and newe:And this che zay my zelf have zeene,And yet ich am no Jewe.
“Ich care not for the bible booke,’Tis too big to be true.Our blessed Ladyes psalterZhall for my money goe;Zuch pretty prayers, as therein bee,The bible cannot zhowe.”
I began to defend the rights of conscience, when, as we came to the foot of the first great hill, the old packman advised me to reconsider my errors, bade me good day, and turned into a cottage; perhaps to sell calico; perhaps to sow tares for the keeper of the keys at Rome.
I made a cut-off, and came upon the road half way up the hill, leaving sultriness for a breezy elevation. Soon wide prospects opened all around me: vast green undulations, dotted with sheep and geese, swelling up into the distant hills and moorlands. That great group of heights on the right—Wild Boar Fell and Shunnor Fell—wherein Nature displays but few of her smiles, is the parent of not a few of Yorkshire’s dales, becks, and waterfalls. In those untroddensolitudes rise Swale and Ure; there lurks the spring from which Eden bursts to flow through gloomy Mallerstang, and transfer its allegiance, as we have seen, to other counties, and the fairest of Cumbrian vales. Our topographical bard, makes the forest of the darksome glen thus address the infant stream:
“O, my bright lovely brook whose name doth bear the soundOf God’s first garden-plot, th’ imparadised ground,Wherein he placed man, from whence by sin he fell:O, little blessed brook, how doth my bosom swellWith love I bear to thee, the day cannot sufficeFor Mallerstang to gaze upon thy beauteous eyes.”
“O, my bright lovely brook whose name doth bear the soundOf God’s first garden-plot, th’ imparadised ground,Wherein he placed man, from whence by sin he fell:O, little blessed brook, how doth my bosom swellWith love I bear to thee, the day cannot sufficeFor Mallerstang to gaze upon thy beauteous eyes.”
Talk of royal tapestries, what carpet can compare with the springy turf that borders the road whereon you walk with lightsome step, happier than a king, and having countless jewels to admire in the golden buds of the gorse? It is a delightful mountain walk, now rising, now falling, but always increasing the elevation; so cool and breezy in comparison with the sultry temperature of the road we left below. And the grouping of the summits around the broad expanse changes slowly as you advance, and between the shades of yellow and green, brown and purple, the darker shadows denote the courses of the dales. Wayfarers are few; perhaps a boy trudges past pulling a donkey, which drags a sledge laden with turf or hay; or a pedlar with crockery; but for miles your only living companions are sheep and geese.
With increasing height we have less of grass and more of ling, and at ten miles from Brough we come to the public-house on Tan Hill, situate in the midst of a desolate brown upland, in which appear the upreared timbers of coalpits, some abandoned, others in work. The house shows signs of isolation in a want of cleanliness and order; but you can get oaten bread, cheese, and passable beer, and have a talk with the pitmen, and the rustics who come in for a drink ere starting homewards with cartloads of coal. Seeing the numerous family round the hostess, I inquired about their school; on which one of the black fellows—a rough diamond—took up the question. There had been a dame school in one of the adjacent cottages, but the old ’oman gave it up, and now the bairns was runnin’ wild. ’Twasn’t right of Mr. ——, the proprietor of the mines, to take away 5000l.a year, and not give back some on’t for a school. It made a man’s heart soreto see bairns wantin’ schoolin’ and no yabble to get it. ’Twasn’t right, that ’t wasn’t.
Apparently an honest miner lived beneath that coaly incrustation, possessed of good sense and sensibility. I quite agreed with him, and recommended him to talk about a school whenever he could get a listener.
About a mile from the public-house the road leaves the brown region, and descends rapidly to the Swale, crossing where the stream swells in rainy weather to a noisy cataract, and Swaledale stretches away before us, a grand mountain valley, yet somewhat severe in aspect. Gentle, as its name imports, appears misapplied to a rushing stream; but a long course lies before it: past Grinton, past picturesque Richmond, ancient ruins, towers of barons, and cloisters of monks, and to the broad Vale of York, where, calmed by old experience, it flows at Myton gently into the Ure. And not only gentle but sacred, for Swale has been called the Jordan of Yorkshire, because of the multitudinous baptism of the earliest converts therein by Paulinus; “above ten thousand men, besides women and children, in one day,” according to the chronicler, who, perhaps to disarm incredulity, explains that the apostle having baptized ten, sent them into the stream to baptize a hundred, and so multiplied his assistants as the rite proceeded, while he prayed on the shore.
By-and-by we meet signs of inhabitants—a house or two; a few fields of mowing grass; the heaps of refuse at lead-mines, and our walk derives a pleasurable interest from the hourly change, the bleak, barren, and lonely, for the sheltered, the cultivated, and inhabited. More and more are the hill-sides wavy with grass as we descend, field after field shut in by stone fences, and the dalesmen are beginning to mow. The time of the hay harvest has come for the mountains: a month later than in the south. How beautifully the bright green contrasts with the dark purple distances, and softens the features of the dale! And as I looked from side to side, or around to the rear, as the fallen road made the hills seem higher, and saw how much Swaledale has in common with a valley of the Alps, I felt that here the desire for mountain scenery might be satisfied; and I found myself watching for the first field of grain with as much interest as I had watched for vines in the Val Mont Joie.
I overtook a party of lead-miners, boys and men, goinghome from work. The boys could read; but there was only one of them who really liked reading. “He’s a good quiet boy,” said the father; “likes to set down wi’ his book o’ evenin’s; t’others says they is tired. He can draw a bit, too; and I’d like well to send’n to a good skule; but I only gets two pounds a month, and that’s poor addlings.” And one of the young men wished that digging for lead didn’t make him so tired, for readin’ made him fall asleep, and yet he wanted to get on with his books. “It don’t seem right,” he added, “that a lad should want a bit o’ larnin’ and not get it.” I said a few words about the value of habit, the steady growth of knowledge from only half an hour’s application continued day after day at the same hour, and the many ways of learning offered to us apart from books. The whole party listened with interest, and expressed their thanks when we parted at the hamlet of Stonesdale. The lad thought he’d try. He’d emigrate, only his wage was too low for saving.
If I had the missionary spirit, I would not go to Patagonia or Feejee; but to the out-of-the-way places in my own country, and labour trustfully there to remove some of the evils of ignorance. Any man who should set himself to such a work, thinking not more highly of himself than he ought to think, would be welcomed in every cottage, and become assured after a while, that many an eye would watch gladly for his coming. One of my first tasks should be to go about and pull up that old pedlar’s mischievous tares, and plant instead thereof a practical knowledge of common things.
With unlimited supplies of stone to draw on, the houses of Stonesdale are as rough and solid as if built by Druids. Every door has a porch for protection against storms, and round each window a stripe of whitewash betrays the rudimentary ornamental art of the inmates. A little farther, and coming to the village of Thwaite, I called at theJoiners’ Armsfor a glass of ale. The landlord, mistaking my voice for that of one of his friends, came hastily into the kitchen with a jovial greeting, and apparently my being a stranger made no difference, for he sat down and began a hearty talk about business; about his boyhood, when he used to run after the hounds; about his children, and the school down at Muker. I laughed when he mentioned running after the hounds, for, as I saw him, he was, as Southey has it, “broad in the rear and abdominous in the van.” His agility hadbeen a fact, nevertheless. I praised the beer. That did not surprise him; he brewed it himself, out of malt and hops, too; not out of doctor’s stuff. I asked a question about Hawes, to which I was going over the Pass. “Oh!” said he, “it’s terribly fallen off for drink. I used to keep the inn there. A man could get a living in that day by selling drink; but now the Methodists and teetotallers have got in among ’em, and the place is quite ruined.” Manifestly my heavy friend looked at the question from the licensed victualler’s point of view. Concerning the school down at Muker, however he was not uncharitable. ’Twas a good school—a church school. There was a chapel of ease there to Grinton. Mr. Lowther did the preaching and looked after the school, and the people liked his teaching and liked his preaching. He brought the children on well, gals as well as the boys; that he did.
If, reader, you should go to Thwaite, and wish to have a chat with a jolly landlord, enquire for Matty John Ned, the name by which he is known in all the country round; remembering what happened in my experience. For when, late in the evening, I intimated to mine host of theWhite Hartat Hawes that Mr. Edward Alderson had recommended me to his house, he replied, doubtfully, “Alderson—Alderson at Thwaite do you say?”
“Yes, Alderson at Thwaite: a big man.”
“O-o-o-o-h! You mean Matty John Ned.”
Below Thwaite the dale expands; trees appear; you see Muker about three miles distant, the chief village of Upper Swaledale: still nothing but grass in the fields; and the same all the way to Reeth, ten miles from Muker. There you would begin to see grain. Not far from Thwaite I turned up a very steep, stony road on the right, which leads over the Buttertubs Pass into Wensleydale, and soon could look down on the village, and miles of Swaledale, and the hills beyond. Among those hills are glens and ravines, and many a spot that it would be a pleasure to explore, to say nothing of the lead mines, and the ‘gliffs’ of primitive manners; and any one who could be content with homely head-quarters at Muker or Thwaite might enjoy a roaming holiday for a week or two. And for lovers of the angle there are trout in the brooks.
The ascent is long as well as steep, and rough withal; but the views repay you every time you pause with more and moreof the features of a mountain pass. There are about it touches of savage grandeur, and the effect of these was heightened at the time I crossed by a deep dark cloud-shadow which overspread a league of the hills, and left the lower range of the dale in full sunshine. For a while the road skirts the edge of a deep glen on the left; it becomes deeper and deeper; there are little fields, and haymakers at work at the bottom; then the slopes change; the heather creeps down; the beck frets and foams, sending its noise upward to your ear; screes and scars intermingle their rugged forms and variations of colour; a waterfall rushes down the crags; and when these have passed before your eyes you find yourself on a desolate summit.
More desolate than any of the heights I had yet passed over. A broad table-land of turf bogs, coffee-coloured pools, stacks of turf, patches of rushes, and great boulders peeping everywhere out from among the hardy heather. The dark cloud still hung aloft, and the wind blew chill, making me quicken my pace, and feel the more pleasure when, after about half an hour, the view opened into Wensleydale. A valley appears on the right, with colts and cattle grazing on the bright green slopes; the road descends; stone abounds; fences, large gate-posts, all are made of stone; the road gets rougher; and by-and-by we come to Shaw, a little village under Stag Fell, by the side of a wooded glen, from which there rises the music of a mountain brook. On the left you see Lord Wharncliffe’s lodge, to which he resorts with his friends on the 12th of August, for the hills around are inhabited by grouse. Yonder the walls and windows of Hawes reflect the setting sun, and we see more of Wensleydale, where trees are numerous in the landscape.
Then another little village, Simonstone, where, passing through the public-house by the bridge, we find a path that leads us into a rocky chasm, about ninety feet deep and twice as much in width, the limestone cliffs hung with trees and bushes, here and there a bare crag jutting out, or lying shattered beneath; while, cutting the grassy floor in two, a lively beck ripples its way along. A bend conceals its source; but we saunter on, and there at the end of the ravine, where the cliffs advance and meet, we see the beck making one leap from top to bottom—and that is Hardraw Scar. The rock overhangs above, hence the water shoots clear of the cliff, and preserves an irregular columnar form, widening at the basewith bubbles and spray. You can go behind it, and look through the falling current against the light, and note how it becomes fuller and fuller of lines of beads as it descends, until they all commingle in the flurry below. Dr. Tyndall might make an observatory of this cool nook, the next time he investigates the cause of the noise in falling water, with the advantage of looking forth on the romantic and pleasing scene beyond. The geologist finds in the ravine a suggestive illustration on a small scale of what Niagara with thunderous plunge has been accomplishing through countless ages—namely, wearing away the solid rock, inch by inch, foot by foot, until in the one instance a river chasm is formed miles in length, and here, in the other, a pretty glen a little more than a furlong deep.
At the time I saw it, the quantity of water was probably not more than would fill a twelve-inch tube; but after heavy rains the upper stream forms a broad horseshoe fall as it rushes over the curving cliff. In the severe frost of 1740, when the Londoners were holding a fair on the Thames, Hardraw Scar was frozen, and, fed continually from the source above, it became at last a cone of ice, ninety feet in height, and as much in circumference at the base: a phenomenon that was long remembered by the gossips of the neighbourhood.
Hawes cheats the eye, and seems near, when by the road it is far off. On the way thither from Simonstone we cross the Ure, the river of Wensleydale, a broad and shallow, yet lively stream, infusing a charm into the landscape, which I saw at the right moment, when the evening shadows were creeping from the meadows up the hill-sides, and the water flashed with gold and crimson ripples. I lingered on the bridge till the last gleam vanished.
So grim and savage are the fells at the head of Wensleydale, that the country folk in times past regarded them with superstitious dread, and called the little brooks which there foster the infancy of Ure, ‘hell-becks’—a name of dread. But both river and dale change their character as they descend, the one flowing through scenes of exquisite beauty ere, united with the Swale, it forms the Ouse; and the dale broadens into the richest and most beautiful of all the North Riding.
Bainbridge—“If you had wanted a wife”—A Ramble—Millgill Force—Whitfell Force—A Lovely Dell—The Roman Camp—The Forest Horn, and the old Hornblower—Haymaking—A Cockney Raker—Wensleydale Scythemen—A Friend indeed—Addleborough—Curlews and Grouse—The First Teapot—Nasty Greens—The Prospect—Askrigg—Bolton Castle—Penhill—Middleham—Miles Coverdale’s Birthplace—Jervaux Abbey—Moses’s Principia—Nappa Hall—The Metcalfes—The Knight and the King—The Springs—Spoliation of the Druids—The great Cromlech—Legend—An ancient Village—Simmer Water—An advice for Anglers—More Legends—Counterside—Money-Grubbers—Widdale—Newby Head.
Four miles from Hawes down the dale is the pleasant village of Bainbridge, where the rustic houses, with flower-plots in front and roses climbing on the walls, and yellow stonecrop patching the roofs and fences, look out upon a few noble sycamores, and a green—a real village green. The hills on each side are lofty and picturesque; at one end, on a flat eminence, remains the site of a Roman camp; the Bain, a small stream coming from a lake some three miles distant, runs through the place in a bed of solid stone, to enter Ure a little below, and all around encroaching here and there up the hill-sides spread meadows of luxuriant grass. The simple rural beauty will gladden your eye, and—as with every stranger who comes to Bainbridge—win your admiration.
Wensleydale enjoys a reputation for cheese and fat pastures and wealth above the neighbouring dales, and appears to be fully aware of its superiority. The folk, moreover, consider themselves refined, advanced in civilization in comparison with the dwellers on the other side of Buttertubs: those whom we talked with yesterday. “Mr. White, if you had wanted a wife, do you think you could choose one out of Swaledale?” was the question put to me by a strapping village lass before I had been three hours in Bainbridge.
Fortune favoured me. I found here some worthy Quakerfriends of mine, who had journeyed from Oxfordshire to spend the holidays under the paternal rooftree. It was almost as if I had arrived at home myself; and although I had breakfasted at Hawes, they took it for granted that I would eat a lunch to keep up my strength till dinner-time. They settled a plan which would keep me till the morrow exploring the neighbourhood—a detention by no means to be repined at—and introduced me to a studious young dalesman, the village author, who knew every nook of the hills, every torrent and noteworthy site, and all the legends therewith associated for miles round, and who was to be my guide and companion.
Away we rambled across the Ure to a small wooded hollow at the foot of Whitfell, in the hills which shut out Swaledale. It conceals a Hardraw Scar in miniature, shooting from an overhanging ledge of dark shale, in which are numerous fossil shells. From this we followed the hill upwards to Millgill Force, a higher fall, on another beck, overshadowed by firs and the mountain elm, and which Nature keeps as a shrine approachable only by the active foot and willing heart. Now you must struggle through the tall grass and tangle on the precipitous sides high among the trees; now stride and scramble over the rocky masses in the bed of the stream. To sit and watch the fall deep under the canopy of leaves, catching glimpses of sunshine and of blue sky above, and to enjoy the delicious coolness, was the luxury of enjoyment. I could have sat for hours. Wordsworth came here during one of his excursions in Yorkshire; and if you wish to know what Millgill Force is, as painted by the pen, even the minute touches, read his description.
But there is yet another—Whitfell Force—higher up, rarely visited, for the hill is steep and the way toilsome. My guide, however, was not less willing to lead than I to follow, and soon we were scrambling through the deepest ravine of all, where the sides, for the most part, afford no footing, not even for a goat, but rise in perpendicular walls, or lean over at the top. Here again the lavish foliage is backed by the dark stiff spines of firs, and every inch of ground, every cranny, all but the impenetrable face of the rock, is hidden by rank grasses, trailing weeds, climbers, periwinkle, woodbine, and ferns, among which the hart’s-tongue throws out its large drooping clusters of graceful fronds. For greater part of the way we had to keep the bed of the stream; nowsqueezing ourselves between mighty lumps of limestone that nearly barred the passage, so that the stream itself could not get through without a struggle; now climbing painfully over where the crevices were too narrow; now zigzagging from side to side wherever the big stones afforded foothold, not without slips and splashes that multiplied our excitement; now pausing on a broad slab to admire the narrowing chasm and all its exquisite greenery. My companion pointed out a crystal pool in which he sometimes bathed—a bath that Naiads themselves might envy. In this way we came at length to a semicircular opening, and saw the fall tumbling from crag to crag for sixty feet, and dispersing itself into a confused shower before it fell into the channel beneath. We both sat for a while without speaking, listening to the cool splash and busy gurgle as the water began its race down the hill; and, for my part, I felt that fatigue and labour were well repaid by the sight of so lovely a dell.
Then by other paths we returned to the village, and mounted to the flat-topped grassy mound, which Professor Phillips says, is an ancient gravel heap deposited by the action of water. The Romans, taking advantage of the site, levelled it, and established thereon a small camp. A statue and inscription and some other relics have been found, showing that in this remote spot, miles distant from their main highway, the conquerors had a military station, finding it no doubt troublesome to keep the dalesmen of their day in order.
Then we looked at a very, very old millstone, which now stands on its edge at the corner of a cottage doing motionless duty as one end of a kennel. The dog creeps in through the hole in the middle. There it stands, an unsatisfactory antique, for no one knows anything about it. Of two others, however, which we next saw, something is known—the old horn and the old hornblower. Bainbridge was chief place of the forest of Wensleydale—of which the Duke of Leeds is now Her Majesty’s Ranger, and at the same time hereditary Constable and Lord of Middleham Castle—and from time immemorial the “forest horn” has been blown on the green, every night at ten o’clock, from the end of September to Shrovetide, and it is blown still; for are not ancient customs all but immortal in our country? The stiff-jointed graybeard hearing that a curious stranger wished to look at the instrument, brought it forth. It is literally a horn—a large ox-horn, lengthened bya hoop of now rusty tin, to make up for the pieces which some time or other had been broken from its mouth. He himself had put on the tin years ago. Of course I was invited to blow a blast, and of course failed. My companion, however, could make it speak lustily; but the old man did best, and blew a long-sustained note, which proved him to be as good an economist of breath as a pearl-diver. For years had he thus blown, and his father before him. I could not help thinking of the olden time ere roads were made, and of belated travellers saved from perishing in the snow by that nightly signal.
Now it was tea-time, and we had tea served after the Wensleydale manner—plain cakes and currant cakes, cakes hot and cold, and butter and cheese at discretion, with liberty to call for anything else that you like; and the more you eat and drink, the more will you rise in the esteem of your hospitable entertainers. And after that I went down to the hay-field, for it was a large field, and the farmer longed to get the hay all housed before sunset. They don’t carry hay in the dales, they ‘lead’ it; and the two boys from Oxfordshire were not a little proud in having the ‘leading’ assigned to them, seeing that they had nothing to do but ride the horse that drew the hay-sledge to and fro between the barn and the ‘wind-rows.’ Another difference is, that forks are not used except to pitch the hay from the sledge to the barn, all the rest—turning the swath, making into cocks—is done with the rake and by hand. So I took a rake, and beginning at one side of the field at the same time with an old hand, worked away so stoutly, that he had much ado to keep ahead of me. And so it went on, all hands working as if there were no such thing as weariness, load after load slipping away to the barn; and I unconsciously growing meritorious. “You’re the first cockney I ever saw,” said the stalwart farmer, “that knew how to handle a rake.” Had I stayed with him a week, he would have discovered other of my capabilities equally praiseworthy. We should have accomplished the task and cleared the field; but a black cloud rose in the west, and soon sent down a heavy shower, and compelled us to huddle up the remaining rows into cocks, and leave them till morning.
Must I confess it? Haymaking with the blithesome lasses in Ulrichsthal is a much more sprightly pastime than haymaking with the Quakers in Wensleydale.
The hay harvest is an exciting time in the dales, for grass is the only crop, and the cattle have to be fed all through the long months of winter, and sometimes far into the backward spring. Hence every thing depends on the hay being carried and housed in good condition; and many an anxious look is cast at passing clouds and distant hill-tops to learn the signs of the weather. The dalesmen are expert in the use of the scythe; and numbers of them, after their own haymaking is over, migrate into Holderness and other grain-growing districts, and mow down the crops, even the wheat-fields, with remarkable celerity.
Many a hand had I to shake the next morning, when the moment came to say farewell. The student would not let me depart alone; he would go with me a few miles, and show me remarkable things by the way; and what was more, he would carry my knapsack. “You will have quite enough of it,” he said, “before your travel is over.” So I had to let him. We soon diverged from the road and began the ascent of Addleborough (Edel-burg,) that noble hill which rises on the south-east of Bainbridge, rearing its rocky crest to a height of more than fifteen hundred feet. We took the shortest way, climbing the tall fences, struggling through heather, striding across bogs, and disturbing the birds. The curlews began their circling flights above our heads, and the grouse took wing with sudden flutter, eight or ten brace starting from a little patch that, to my inexperience, seemed too small to hide a couple of chickens.
My companion talked as only a dalesman can talk—as one whose whole heart is in his subject. None but a dalesman, he said, could read Wordsworth aright, or really love him. He could talk of the history of the dale, and of the ways of the people. His great-grandmother was the first in Bainbridge who ever had a teapot. When tea first began to be heard of in those parts, a bagman called on an old farmer, and fascinated him so by praising the virtues of the new leaf from China, that with his wife’s approval he ordered a ‘stean’ to begin with. The trader ventured to suggest that a stone of tea would be a costly experiment, and sent them only a pound. Some months afterwards he called again for “money and orders,” and asked how the worthy couple liked the tea. “Them was the nastiest greens we ever tasted,” was the answer. “The parcel cam’ one morning afore dinner, so themissus tied ’em up in a cloth and put ’em into t’ pot along wi’ t’ bacon. But we couldn’t abear ’em when they was done; and as for t’ broth, we couldn’t sup a drop on ’t.”
Having climbed the last steep slope, we sat down in a recess of the rocky frontlet which the hill bears proudly on its brow, and there, sheltered from the furious wind, surveyed the scene below. We could see across the opposite fells, in places, to the summits on the farther side of Swaledale, and down Wensleydale for miles, and away to the blue range of the Hambleton hills that look into the Vale of York. Bainbridge appears as quiet as if it were taking holiday; yonder, Askrigg twinkles under a thin white veil of smoke; and farther, Bolton Castle—once the prison of the unhappy Queen of Scots—shows its four square towers above a rising wood: all basking in the glorious sunshine. Yet shadows are not wanting. Many a dark shade marks where a glen breaks the hill-sides: some resemble crooked furrows, trimmed here and there with a dull green fringe, the tree-tops peeping out, and by these signs the beck we explored yesterday may be discerned on the opposite fell. Wherever that little patch of wood appears, there we may be sure a waterfall, though all unseen, is joining in the great universal chorus. Ure winds down the dale in many a shining curve, of which but one is visible between bright green meadow slopes, and belts, and clumps of wood, that broaden with the distance; and all the landscape is studded with the little white squares—the homes of the dalesmen.
Four miles below the stream rushes over great steps of limestone which traverse its bed at Aysgarth Force, and flows onwards past Penhill, the mountain of Wensleydale, overtopping Addleborough by three hundred feet; past Witton Fell and its spring, still known as Diana’s Bath; past Leyburn, and its high natural terrace—the Shawl, where the ‘Queen’s gap’ reminds the visitor once more of Mary riding through surrounded by a watchful escort; past Middleham, where the lordly castle of the King-maker now stands in hopeless ruin, recalling the names of Anne of Warwick, Isabella of Clarence, Edward IV., and his escape from the haughty baron’s snare; of Richard of Gloucester, and others who figure in our national history; past Coverdale, the birthplace of that Miles Coverdale whose translation of the Bible will keep his memory green through many a generation, and the site ofCoverham Abbey, of which but a few arches now remain. It was built in 1214 for the Premonstratensians, or White Canons, who never wore linen. Where the Cover falls into the Ure, spreads the meadow Ulshaw, the place from which Oswin dismissed his army in 651. Tradition preserves the memory of Hugh de Moreville’s seat, though not of the exact site, and thus associates the neighbourhood with one of the slayers of Becket. And at East Witton, beyond Coverham, are the ruins of the Cistercian Abbey of Jervaux—Jarvis Abbey, as the country folk call it—a relic dating from 1156. Plunderers and the weather had their own way with it until 1805, when the Earl of Aylesbury, to whom the estate belongs, inspired by his steward’s discovery of a tesselated pavement, stayed the progress of dilapidation, and had the concealing heaps of grass-grown rubbish dug away. Old Jenkins, who died in 1670, remembered Jervaux as it stood in its prime: he had shared the dole given by the monks to poor wayfarers. He remembered, too, the mustering of the dalesmen under the banner of the good Lord Scroop of Bolton for the battle of Flodden, when