Glyders in their wilderness of rocks, it is for the very different
qualities of breadth and bulk that we admire the great mountain
range of which the centre and crown is Carnedd Llewelyn. Look at a
graded map of Carnarvonshire, and you will note that this conspicuous
group, extending from the steep spur of Carnedd Dafydd, above the
shore of Llyn Ogwen, to the sea-washed promontory of Penmaenmawr,
comprises a much greater _extent_ of high ground--say, of over three
thousand feet--than either Snowdon or the Glyders; and, owing to its
larger area, its hidden recesses are wilder, more desolate, and more
primitive, than any other hill-tract in North Wales. Sharp peaks it has
none; but in places, as at the head of Cwm Eigiau or Cwm Llafar, there
are huge crags and precipices, nor are there wanting grand ridges, such
as the rocky isthmus that unites Pen Helig to Carnedd Llewelyn, or the
high saddle between the two Carnedds themselves; but for the most part
what impresses one in these mountains, as compared with those already
described, is the greater spaciousness of their massive heights, and
the greater openness of their outlook, both skyward and seaward.
For those who love such wilds, nothing is better than a long day’s
wandering in the heart of this secluded district, whether the start be
made from the Capel Curig quarter, or from Nant Ffrancon on the west,
or from the Conway Valley on the east, or from the northern seacoast
at Aber; in any case there is need of strong and steady walking to
surmount the marshy slopes, the haunt of plover and curlew, by which
the great Carnedd is encircled, and to place oneself on the high
plateau above. The compass, too, will have to be brought into play, if
there are clouds on the hills, for nowhere are mists more bewildering
than on these vast moorlands, where there are no natural signposts for
our guidance, and where the bare grassy spaces stretch away for miles
without a distinguishing mark. The best of all these walks is that from
Capel Curig to Aber, which takes us by Llyn Llugwy, the source of the
Llugwy River, to Carnedd Llewelyn, and thence across the great flat
tops to Y Foel Fras, and down past the little Llyn-an-Afon through a
narrow glen to the sea.
For myself these strange lonely mountains, perhaps because I knew them
earliest, have always had a peculiar charm; and I have found their
fascination as strong in winter-time as in summer. Great as are the
delights of Llyn Llugwy on a hot June day, I also think of it with
affection as I have known it in December, lashed into fury by the
winds, and its black waters in sharp contrast with the surrounding
snow. What the temper of the wind can be in these uplands on a gusty
winter afternoon, when it lifts up flakes of snow and ice from the
hillside and flings them broadcast in blinding showers, only those will
understand who have plodded to the top of Carnedd Llewelyn or Carnedd
Dafydd at such season.
Enough has now been said, perhaps, to make plain at least the leading
characteristics of Snowdonia, as viewed from our central starting-point
at Capel Curig. But what the pilgrim to these mountains can never make
plain, for he has only half guessed it himself, is the deeper meaning
which they have for him, the higher vision which he has caught from
their stern companionship during his solitary rambles in their midst.
III
At the Shrine of Scafell
If “angry grandeur,” as has been said, is the feature of the
Carnarvonshire mountains, that of the Cumbrian Fells may be described
as friendly grouping. Unlike the proud oligarchies of Snowdon and
the Glyders, we see here a free and equal democracy, a brood of
giant brothers, linked together with rocky arm in arm, and with no
crowned heads claiming marked predominance over their fellows. It is
collectively, rather than singly, that the Lake mountains impress us.
“In magnitude and grandeur,” says Wordsworth, “they are individually
inferior to the most celebrated of those in some other parts of the
island; but in the combinations which they make, towering above each
other, or lifting themselves in ridges like the waves of a tumultuous
sea, they are surpassed by none.”[13]
The sense of greater friendliness and accessibility of which we are
conscious among these hills may be due partly to this cause, still
more, perhaps, to the influence of the Lake writers, who have so
largely created the sentiment with which the fells are begirt; we
feel “at home” there in a degree not known to us either in Wales or
in Scotland. It has to be remembered, too, that the Lake District, in
contrast to Wales, is a land without a past, the cradle of a fortunate
race which has had no troubled record of wars or rumours of wars, but
an almost unruffled exemption from “history”; and this, again, may tend
to strengthen the feeling of serenity associated with these heights,
even in the minds of those who have undergone many buffetings from
their storms.
But this feeling must be a modern one, for the earliest visitors, as we
have seen, were affected rather by the terrors than the charms of the
mountains, so that the very bridle-paths seemed as precipices to them,
and we find one old traveller sagely remarking that “there is something
unmanly in conceiving a difficulty in traversing a path, which, we were
told, the women of the country would ascend on horseback, with their
panniers of eggs and butter.”[14] Of all writers, the best qualified,
by his love of the mystic and sublime, to give expression to the awe
which the fells once inspired, was De Quincey; and in his _Memorials of
Grasmere_ he has drawn a highly coloured, yet in spirit very faithful
picture of a region rather vaguely apprehended by him, where, as he
says, far beyond the “enormous barrier” of his own Easedale, “tower
the aspiring heads, usually enveloped in cloud and mist, of Glaramara,
Bowfell, and the other fells of Langdale Head and Borrowdale.” And here
it may be remarked that though much poetry, of a far-fetched kind, has
been written about mountains, the mountains are still waiting for their
poet, at close quarters. In Wordsworth’s “Excursion” certain aspects
of the fells are wonderfully portrayed, and in Scott’s “Helvellyn,”
and that canto of his “Lord of the Isles” where the Coolin Hills are
the theme, we have true mountain idylls; but on the whole it has to
be confessed that the poets have written about mountains as if they
had never set foot on them, but had been content to take the panoramic
“views” of them from afar. Even Wordsworth’s prose account of his
ascent from Seathwaite “to the top of the ridge, called Ash Course,”
makes one suspect that his real acquaintance with the hills was very
slight; indeed his corruption of the guide’s pronunciation of “Esk
Hause” (the typical name of the central saddle of the Scafell range, at
the head of Eskdale) into the absurdity of “Ash Course,” shows that he
had but little sympathetic knowledge either of the nomenclature of the
hills or of the dialect of the hillsmen.
There is much insight, however, in Wordsworth’s selection of the Sty
Head as the pivot of the Scafell group. “From a point between Great
Gavel and Scafell,” he says, “a shepherd would not require more than
an hour to descend into any one of the principal vales by which he
would be surrounded. Yet, though clustered together, every valley
has its distinct and separate character.” The truth of this will be
owned by every one who has personally studied the district. If we take
Scafell Pike, with the Gable and Bowfell, as a single mountain, we have
the common centre from which there radiate at least seven important
glens--Borrowdale, with its gorgeous colouring and variegated effects
of rock and turf, leafage and river; the grave and simple beauty of
Buttermere; Ennerdale, wild and primitive, its Pillar Rock rising
like a pulpit in the midst; Wastdale, plain to the verge of ugliness,
even as an unfurnished room is plain, yet full of the sense of the
great heights that wall it round; the solitude of upper Eskdale, with
its mighty waterfalls and mountain pools; the more sociable Duddon,
and the pastoral greenery of Langdale. Surely nowhere else in Great
Britain can we stand on a hill-top with seven such valleys at our feet!
As a single starting-point for scaling each and all of these hills,
the choice would rest either on Wastdale or on Seathwaite, the little
hamlet at the extreme head of Borrowdale, noted as “the rainiest place
in England,” which means only that when it rains there it rains with a
will; they are so placed that there is hardly a summit in the district
that cannot be reached by a strong walker from these points.
Of the four chief groups which the hills of Lakeland assume--Skiddaw
to the north, Helvellyn to the east, Grasmoor to the west, and to the
south the range of Scafell--the last named is by far the most alluring
both to the nature-lover and to the climber, for it is much wilder,
rockier and more precipitous than the rest. Looking at a raised or
tinted map of the district, we might conceive this rough mountain mass
to be a great birdlike figure swooping north-eastward, to dip its beak
in Derwentwater; with Glaramara for its down-stretched head and neck,
with Great End for its elevated shoulder, from which are extended in
sweeping curves to right and left the two superb “wings” of Bowfell and
the Gable; with the Pikes as the ruffled plumes of the mighty back,
and Scafell as the dark high-spread tail. Such, we may imagine, is the
great stone eagle that flies towards the pastures of Borrowdale.
Though devoid, for the most part, of sharp peaks and ridges, and
massive rather than graceful in their general form, these Cumbrian
Pikes, like the Carnarvonshire Glyders to which in general character
they are akin, have the charm of untamed wildness; you may clamber
for weeks together over their desert of crags and coves, yet find
their wonders inexhaustible. Seamed as they are in many places by deep
“ghylls” and gullies, or carved into stark faces of rock, bristling
with projecting “pinnacles” and “pillars,” the grandest sight of all
they have to show is Mickledore Chasm, the great “door” which some
primeval force has flung open between the Pikes and Scafell; and it is
only when the range is approached from the east or the west that this
vast natural fissure, thoroughfare for the winds of heaven, can be
properly seen. The very heart of the mountain is reached when you stand
on the ridge of Mickledore, with the cliffs of Scafell towering over
you on one side and the Pikes on the other, for from this centre you
can look down into Eskdale or Wastdale, or climb to either summit, as
you choose; and here, in this huge hollow, is often a witches’ cauldron
of the clouds, which come drifting up from either valley according to
the whim of the wind, until they meet a contrary current at the top,
and are piled up in swirling masses on one side of the ridge, while
the other side, as if protected by some invisible curtain, remains
cloudless and sunlit.
Next to Mickledore in interest is Piers Gill, the gigantic cleft,
shut in by high walls of rock, which zigzags down the north slope of
the Pikes opposite the Sty Head, rivalling the Welsh “Twll Du” in
savageness and much surpassing it in beauty. Viewing it from the top
of the Great Gable, one is reminded of a monstrous serpent--a stone
serpent in the clutch of the stone eagle--writhing downwards from the
crags of Lingmell; when entered from below, it is found to be the
wildest of the many rock-ravines, veritable cañons in miniature, by
which these mountains are cloven, as witness the fine Crinkle Gill and
Hell Gill on Bowfell, and the famous Dungeon Ghyll, “so foully rent,”
on Langdale Pikes.
Turning now to the northern shoulder of the Pikes, the high promontory
of Great End, we see around us an almost unbroken continent, with a
stony isthmus leading eastward across Esk Pike to Bowfell, so shapely
a peak when seen from the Windermere lowlands; and there are few finer
walks than to follow these heights for their whole length, passing over
Crinkle Crags to the Wrynose Pass, and thence, if time and strength
allow, along the Coniston Fells to the Old Man. On the other hand, the
leftward wing from Great End, after dipping to the Sty Head, rises
steeply again to another chain of summits, the first of which is no
less glorious a goal than the crown of the Great Gable.
For, after all, it is neither to Scafell, nor to Bowfell, nor to any
lesser fell, that the mountain lover looks, when, after long absence,
the well-remembered phalanx of heights--the “tumultuous waste of huge
hill-tops,” as Wordsworth so fitly termed them--again unfolds itself
to his gaze. He looks to the Great Gable. In so far as the Cumbrian
Hills can be singly appraised, the Gable is the summit to which there
clings the strongest sentiment, by virtue both of its noble and
arresting outline, and of the grand rocks and ridges by which it is
so powerfully flanked. Its name is somewhat ill-chosen, perhaps, for
the likeness to a gable is hardly to be discovered except from the
south; from other quarters the impression is rather that of a great
round tower, or dome, a majestic sight when seen from a few miles’
distance, belted with clouds, or looming up in dark relief against an
ominous sky. Nor, when one approaches it more closely, is there any
sense of disappointment. “It’s a strange place, is Gable,” said my
Wastdale shepherd, and such will certainly be the judgment of those who
have roamed in all weathers about its shivered and rock-strewn sides.
Of the ordinary ascents, the least inspiring is that usually chosen,
from the top of the Sty Head Pass; it is far better, if you come from
Seathwaite, to follow the little beck, beloved of the water-ousel,
which joins the stream that flows from the Sty Head Tarn, and having
thus gained the saddle between the Great and the Green Gable, to skirt
the northern verge of the mountain overlooking the Ennerdale precipice,
till you reach the broad top; or, if Wastdale be your starting-point,
you can ascend by a still more fascinating route, up the long grassy
ridge known as Gavel Neese.
Close to the cairn, at the top, is the small rock-cistern in which
there is a “perennial” remnant of rain-water, idealized by several
writers, following Wordsworth, into a pure and celestial lymph. “Even
in the driest summer,” says the _History of Cumberland_ (1883), “the
sparkling liquid gushes forth from the little fount.” In truth the
pool, at its best, is but stagnant and brackish, and owing to the
habits of some tourists is now often polluted with bits of food or
newspapers; so that no worse punishment need be invoked on those who
pen such fictions than that they should themselves be forced to slake
their thirst with its waters. There is the less need to romance about
this “fount” because the three real streams that have their source on
the Gable are peculiarly fresh and sweet; in fact, there is hardly a
more charming little torrent than Gable Beck, which goes singing down
into Wastdale on the left of the Neese as you ascend.
But the chief glory of the Gable lies in the wild crags on its southern
and northern sides. Much as climbers have written of the Great Napes,
the huge outstanding stack of cliffs that seems to overhang the
traveller between Wastdale and the Sty Head, scanty justice has been
done to their strange and terrible beauty, which is enhanced by the
fact that the whole front of the mountain from which they project
is itself a precarious scree-slide of extreme steepness, so that in
looking up to these impending arêtes one surveys them not from a flat
base but from a shifty slope inclining at a sharp angle to the vale,
and they have thus all the appearance of a greater precipice upstarting
fantastically from a lesser one. Their name of “Napes” is aptly
bestowed, for they are united with the Gable by a narrow neck, where
the green turf, streaked with red undersoil, is in bright contrast to
the prevailing grey of the mountain.
Standing at the foot of the Napes, one finds in them a series of
fanlike ridges and gullies, from one of which rises the famous
Needle, subject of countless articles and photographs; and if it
be holiday-season there will probably be one or two parties either
climbing or prepared to climb. The Needle being far too slender to
accommodate many cragsmen at once, the curious sight may sometimes
be witnessed of one set of Needle-men, including more rarely a
Needle-woman, gravely waiting their turn, while their predecessors
are manœuvring in various postures on the rock. The sport of
mountaineering, it may be remarked, differs from certain other sports
in this, that, however exciting it maybe to those personally engaged,
the mere onlooker is apt to find the spectacle rather tedious; nor is
this surprising, when one remembers the large scale of the scene, and
that the progress is slow in proportion to the severity of the ascent,
a climber on the mountain-side occupying much the same position,
relatively, as a fly on the house-wall. Still, there are many of us who
would rather be spectators of such gymnastics than take an active part
in them.
The crags overlooking Ennerdale, if less peculiar than the Great Napes,
are also very impressive, and though long proclaimed “inaccessible”
have now been assiduously explored and mapped out by enterprising
climbers. A romantic interest, too, attaches to them, through the
discovery made by Mr. W. P. Haskett Smith of “a sort of hut of loose
stones, evidently the refuge of some desperate fugitive of half a
century or more ago,” who is presumed, on somewhat imperfect evidence,
to have been a smuggler,[15] but whom we should prefer to regard as a
pilgrim of the mountains, a fugitive only from the cares and worries of
an over-exacting civilization. Whether “Moses’ Sledgate,” the rather
mysterious half-obliterated old track, which may be seen winding round
the west side of the Gable, had any connexion, as Mr. Haskett Smith
surmises, with the hermitage among the crags, must be left to the
reader’s imagination; it seems more likely that the prosaic statement
of another writer, that the path was formerly used for carrying slates
from the Honister Quarries to Wastdale, is the correct one. However
that may be, all climbers will subscribe to Mr. Haskett Smith’s praise
of the Gable as “splendid to look at, splendid to look from, and
splendid to climb.” It is, in truth, a mountain of mountains, and has
the same intimate hold on the affections of the climber in Cumberland
as Tryfan has in Wales.
From the Gable it is but a step--as mountains go--to the Pillar,
of which the famous Pillar Rock is a dependency, and even those who
are not “Pillarites” in the true sense will find a rare pleasure in
scrambling around and about the Rock, which may be reached by the rough
track known as the High Level, leading direct to its foot from the top
of Black Sail Pass across the face of the fine northern front of the
fell, in the course of which “traverse” they will follow the windings
of several bold capes and green shady coves. The Rock itself, though
somewhat dwarfed by the parent mountain when viewed from a distance, is
a grand object from below, when one stands right under the great walls
which form its northern buttress.
Of the many climbers who frequent the new hotel at Wastdale Head,
now spoken of as “the Chamounix of the Lake District,” few probably
remember the place as it used to be when the fine old dalesman, William
Ritson, was the landlord, a bleak bare hostel, where the guests,
whatever their personal inclinations may have been, led emphatically
the simple life. It so happened that, in one of my early visits to
Wastdale, I was staying there with a friend at the time when the
Rev. James Jackson, the octogenarian known as “the Patriarch of the
Pillarites,” was killed on the Pillar Fell, and the last evening of
his life he spent with us at Ritson’s, narrating his own mountain
exploits, and reciting the verses in which he celebrated them. It was
the last day of April, 1878, and on the May morning the brave old man
went forth to repeat his annual pilgrimage to the Pillar Rock; we saw
him, and were probably the last to see him, plodding off with slow
step in the early twilight. Two days later, when we were coming back
to Wastdale from Buttermere, we heard shouts across Ennerdale, and
climbing up the Pillar Fell, close to the east of the Rock, in a dense
mist, we met a search party, and learnt that Mr. Jackson had not been
seen since he started. Joining in the search, we peered and groped
about the recesses of Pillar Cove, now dim and ghostly under a heavy
pall of vapour; but it was not till the next day, when the clouds had
lifted, that the body was found, as a dalesman expressed it, “ligging
under the Pillar,” the fact being that he had met his death not on the
Rock itself, but on a ledge of the steep brow above. It has been said
that his vigour was unimpaired, and that the same accident might have
happened to a boy, but to us, who were strangers to him, he gave the
impression of much physical weakness, and, as the sequel proved, so
far from being in a fit state to scale a dangerous crag, he was not
capable of crossing the easy ridge which gives access to it. So strong
is the fascination of the mountains, which can lure an old pilgrim of
eighty-two years thus to sacrifice himself at their shrine!
Of the other ranges of the Lake District--Helvellyn, Saddleback,
Grasmoor, and their kin--differing widely as they do from the Scafell
group in their smoother contours and less savage rock-scenery, little
need here be said; but there is at least one distinctive feature in
which they excel, and that is the number and keenness of their “edges.”
To a connoisseur in climbing, there is always a great attraction in the
mountain which may be approached by a narrow stair--
The peak that stormward bares an edge
Ground sharp in days when Titans warred--
and herein is the unfailing charm of such otherwise formless masses as
Saddleback and Helvellyn. Who, for instance, would ascend Helvellyn by
that ponderous bank above Wythburn, when he might have Striding Edge
for his upward path and Swirrel Edge for his return? And why should
any one climb Saddleback by its toilsome grassy slopes, when an ideal
course is offered him in Sharp Edge, overlooking Scales Tarn, and in
Narrow Edge, which falls away with scarcely less sharpness from the
highest summit? I have named the most famous of these edges, but many
others not greatly inferior will suggest themselves; thus Fairfield may
be delightfully taken by the narrow ridges of Cofa Pike and Hartsop
Dodd, and even the bulky Grasmoor assumes an air of refinement, if
scaled by the slim reef of Whiteside, or by the slender arm that
it holds out to the promontory of Causey Pike. In old days these
knife-edges were reputed difficult and perilous. “The awful curtain
of rock named Striding Edge,” is De Quincey’s description of the
chief ornament of Helvellyn; and Green, in describing his adventurous
crossing of Sharp Edge on Saddleback, speaks of the necessity “either
of bestriding the ridge, or of moving on one of its sides with hands
lying over the top, as a security against falling into the tarn on the
left or into a frightful gully on the right.” What was once a terror
has now become a joy to the climber of ordinary powers, but to this
day one may hear expressions of the old misgivings. A friend who had
come over the edges of Saddleback told me afterwards that he had felt
“sick with fear,” and I have heard a tourist on Snowdon, fresh from the
passage of the Beddgelert “Saddle,” exclaim in solemn accents, “It is a
thing to be done once in a lifetime, and no more.” In winter, however,
all is changed, and these ridges are then made really formidable by
the frozen snow-drifts, which can often transform a steep bank into a
dangerous ice-slope, with a veritable razor-edge for its summit.