the hills themselves, as the glimpses which he gains into the ways
of the non-human people that have their homes there. It thrills us
to remember that the mountains, lonely though we call them, have for
centuries on centuries had their own populous dramas of life and death,
and that their rocky tenements were inhabited, in some cases down
to comparatively modern times, by the bear, the wolf, the boar, the
wild cat, and other hardy outlaws that now exist but in a name or a
tradition; but while we must lament the loss of such peaceful animals
as the beaver, spoken of by Giraldus Cambrensis as still resident
on one Welsh stream in the twelfth century,[16] and the stag, now
surviving only in a corner of the Lake District, we need not affect
to regret the disappearance of the more savage beasts of prey, for
banditti, whether human or non-human, must be subdued.
And it is one of the compensating advantages of the destruction of
the greater “game” that the mountains are no longer a hunting-place.
You may walk where you will, round Snowdon or round Scafell, without
the fear of being turned back, as so often happens in the Scotch
highlands, by the nuisance of game-preserving; nor will your own
feelings be harassed by the spectacle of a troop of deer-stalkers,
or other blood-sportsmen intent on “killing something.” There is, of
course, fishing in plenty, but that, as far as I have watched it in
these upland places, is an exercise rather of faith and imagination
than of the red right hand; at any rate one seldom _sees_ the fisherman
catch anything, and the “fool with a gun” is now as rare a sight
as the rare birds whom his forerunners have “dropped”--to use that
telling expression of the game-keepers. Fox-hunting on foot goes on
to some extent in the winter months; but the need of killing these
mischievous pilferers is here a reality, and not, as in fashionable
hunting-counties, a sham, and we may rightly wish to see the fox
exterminated as the wolf has been--a far humaner and more rational
course than that of “preserving” him to be tortured by huntsmen. The
otter-worry, that very mean form of cruelty, is carried on in the lower
valleys of a few mountain districts, where the pools are large and
deep, but climbers on the hills are in little danger of meeting with
the motley rabble who partake in it.
Here, then, is another goodly feature of mountaineering, that, as
one of its accomplished masters, Mr. Owen Glynne Jones, observed, it
“does not claim the sacrifice of beasts and fishes.” The craft of
climbing is a fine physical training which, as a school of manliness
and self-reliance, immeasurably transcends the wretched amateur
butchery that masquerades as “sport.” “The mountaineer,” says Reclus,
“experiences, like the huntsman, the delight of conquest after toil,
yet he enjoys the pleasure all the more, in that he has risked none but
his own life; he has kept his hands unstained.”
In the absence of the larger kinds of wild animals that have gone down
under the stress of what we call civilization, it is to the mountain
birds that we first turn with interest. We think at once of the golden
eagle, in regions where the names of so many cliffs recall his former
sovereignty; and those who have seen the great bird, as I have, flying
in freedom among the mountains of Skye, and, as happened on one
occasion I recall, mobbed by dwarfish-looking ravens, as a kestrel is
mobbed by sparrows, on the shores of Loch Coruisk, until he sailed off
on wide wings across the corrie, cannot but regret that he is no longer
known in his traditional haunts on Snowdon, or on his famous crag in
Borrowdale. But when we read in old books of travel, such as West’s
_Guide to the Lakes in Cumberland_ (1781), that “the devastation made
on the fold in the breeding-season, by one eyrie, was computed at a
lamb a day,” we understand why the doom of the eagle was even then
unavoidable and why it became “a common species of traffic,” as another
author described it, “to supply the curious with young eagles, in the
taking of which the inhabitants were very expert.”[17]
I was told by a sheep-farmer in Scotland, who had trapped or shot over
a score of these feathered freebooters, that for an eagle to carry off
a plump lamb from the pastures there is need of a freshening breeze
to lift the mighty wings; he had seen cases when, in dull listless
weather, the bird was unable to rise with its quarry, and on the
approach of the shepherd was obliged to abandon it and flap reluctantly
away.
A lady who had been pained to see a golden eagle “for sale,” once
asked me whether, in the event of her ransoming the captive, it would
be possible to set him at liberty on some mountain height, and for a
time I was rather dazzled by the idea of releasing the imperial bird
from the top of Snowdon or Scafell, or, if the companionship of other
eagles was desired, from some far northern peak; but on my consulting
a well-known ornithologist he assured me that the eagle, cramped by
long imprisonment, would probably be unable to fly, and that if he did
fly he would almost certainly fall a victim to some local “sportsman,”
or be pecked to death by his wild congeners, if there were any in the
neighbourhood; so in the face of these discouraging predictions the
project was given up.
Eagles, then, we have none in our Welsh and English mountains, and the
kite having now been reduced to so poor a remnant as to be numbered
with the lost British birds, we turn perforce to the buzzard and the
peregrine as the two most noteworthy representatives of the family of
the Falcons. The fiery-hearted peregrine, or “falcon-hawk,” as the
dalesmen call him, still breeds on certain rocky ramparts, whence he
can overlook the valleys and dart forth unerringly on any passing prey.
An eye-witness once described to me how a falcon, having struck down
one of two pigeons in a field at the head of Langdale, and being scared
from his victim by some harvesters who saw the chase, rose instantly
and was off at lightning speed after the other pigeon over the ridge of
Bowfell!
We look in vain to the buzzard for such indomitable energies; yet it
is a grand sight to watch him sailing aloft in leisurely circles, or
hanging poised, as he sometimes does, off the edge of some broken
escarpment, so near that you can see his barred feathers and quickly
glancing eye. On a misty day in rounding a sharp headland, I have
sometimes come suddenly upon a perched buzzard at only a few yards’
distance, and have seen him flutter up in a panic, to lose himself in
the clouds; in the nesting season the bird will occasionally “shadow”
an intruding climber almost as the curlew does, and follow him at close
distance along the ridge of the mountain until he has conducted him off
his estate. I have frequently seen buzzards and ravens sparring at each
other in the sky, in that desultory and ineffective manner of warfare
which many birds seem to adopt.
The raven, who, in default of the eagle, divides with the buzzard
the empire of the crags is, perhaps, the most interesting bird that
now claims our attention; and robber though he is, we are always
glad to hear his deep “_kronk_,” or his wild dog-like bark, before
the black form is seen skirting the edge of the precipice or winging
straight across the glen. It is somewhat strange that in spite of
the persecution of shepherds, the cupidity of collectors, and the
inroads of rock-climbers, so large a bird can still find undisturbed
breeding-places, and maintain his numbers as well as he does among
our British hills; but I think the case of the raven, as far as these
districts are concerned, is hardly so desperate as ornithologists give
us to understand. To walk for several hours among the Carnarvonshire
or the Cumberland mountains without evidence of ravens, is in my
experience rather unusual, and at times one may see them there in
great strength; a few years ago, for example, I watched nine birds one
August afternoon soaring and skimming with playful antics along the
edge of Grasmoor, and so intent on their game that they allowed me to
come within quite close range; on another occasion I saw more than a
score of them rise together from the side of Skiddaw, doubtless from a
carrion feast.
It is astonishing how near this wary outlaw will approach to
dwelling-houses in the early summer mornings before mankind is on the
stir. It so happened that from the cottage at Capel Curig where I used
to stay, I could see a section of the hillside above as I lay in bed,
and on two successive mornings I was puzzled by what seemed to be a
concourse of large fowls hopping and squabbling, a few hundred yards
from my window, round some object on the bank. On further investigation
I found this object to be the carcase of a sheep, and the combatants to
be hungry ravens “on the grab.”
But there are other and more cheery singers in the mountain choir. In
the early summer, when the bird-life of these upland valleys is at
its prime, two voices above all others are resonant along the Welsh
hillsides, those of the cuckoo and the curlew, who fill the clear
air with their clear melody the whole of the long June day, and not
a little of the night. There are, perhaps, few sounds in wild nature
more fascinating than the curlew’s call, starting, as it does, with its
strange single note, and gradually rising and breaking into what seems
like rings and bubbles of exquisitely liquid song, which fall here and
there on the grey moorland while the singer is often unseen. As for
the cuckoo, that _improbus anser_ of the hills, there are seasons when
he seems to be ubiquitous; you pass him shouting in the valley as you
start out; you meet him again and again about the middle region of
heathery boulders and grass slopes; and when you emerge on the sky-line
and think you have left him far below, his voice comes after you, as
jubilant as ever, and pursues you to the very cairn on the top.
Familiar friends, also, are the ring-ousel, or, as some call him, the
rock-ousel, and the wheatear; the one as fussy and loquacious as his
lowland cousin, the blackbird (thanks to his outcry, I have sometimes
found his nest on a ledge of steep heather-covered rock, as under the
northern front of Tryfan); the other flitting silent and watchful, with
quick jerky movements, from stone to stone, or along the grey wall on
the mountain. These with the ever-welcome meadow-pipit, are rarely
absent from the hillside. Of the river birds there is none that has so
strong a hold on the affections of the mountaineer as the water-ousel,
delightful little sprite of the tumbling becks and eddies, from which
his very being seems inseparable. No writer with whom I am acquainted
has paid a juster tribute to the many charms of the water-ousel than
the author of _The Mountains of California_, whose chapter on the
American variety of the bird (_Cinclus Mexicanus_) recalls many of
the traits of our English “dipper” as we have known him, none too
plentifully, beside his native streams and pools. The grey wagtail and
the sandpiper will be found in similar haunts.
The beasts of the mountain, as viewed by the passing observer are, with
one exception, less interesting, because less wild, than the birds;
for the fox and the “mart” are seldom seen by the climber, who, in his
eagerness to reach his goal, has no time to devote, as the naturalist
would, to a patient watching of their haunts. The exception is the
wild goat, which, strange to say, is not known as a British species
by the majority of naturalists, though it has much more right to that
distinction than the “wild” Chillingham cattle; for it is a fact that
on some of the Welsh mountains as on some Scottish islands, there are
still herds of goats which, if not indigenous (that claim, it seems,
is disproved by their mixed colours and the shape of their horns), are
yet living in a state of absolute freedom and wildness, full of courage
and resource, and able to hold their own under hardships of climate
which no domestic animal could endure, and there is little doubt that
these herds, though descended from escaped animals, and reinforced
from time to time by “strays” that have taken to the hills, are of
very great antiquity. They used to be common, a century or less ago,
in a number of craggy spots, such as the Pass of Aberglaslyn, from
which they have now been driven; but a remnant may still be seen on the
Rhinog Fawr, and a few other lonely ranges, by those who approach them
with due care.[18] It was lately stated in a London paper that “wild
goat stalking among the Hebrides can fairly stand comparison with ibex
shooting”; and I can remember, some forty-five years ago, hearing some
talk at Pen-y-Gwryd about an expedition to Snowdon to shoot goats.
There are as few goats as eagles on Snowdon now; but I can testify that
the sport is an excellent one when the field-glass is substituted for
the rifle, for in this way I have stalked some fine goats on the Rhinog
and elsewhere, and have rejoiced to see them go bounding across the
cliffs in style that would do credit to the Swiss chamois or the white
goat of the Rockies. I was told that there was a similar herd on the
Yewdale Fells, near Coniston; but the only wild goat that I have seen
in the Lake District was a solitary one whom I surprised, in a steep
and secluded hollow, on the rocky side of Glaramara.
These wild Welsh goats must not be confused with the half-domesticated
herds which it was the custom until about fifty years ago to keep on
the hills as sheep are now kept. We are told by Cliffe in his _Book of
North Wales_ (1851) that “but few of the national animal, the goat,
are now kept, in consequence of the injury which they have done to
the young plantations”; and the same writer gives a vivid account of
a goat-hunt--apparently of the wild animal--which he witnessed on the
Rhinog.
While ascending we heard much shouting, and barking of dogs,
intermingled with piercing shrieks. Then we passed a gigantic
snow-white billy-goat, with his legs tied, struggling at
intervals convulsively, and uttering very shrill cries.
Presently we came in sight of several men in a narrower part
of the Pass, striving to capture another white billy-goat
of greater size and even longer horns. The animal had taken
refuge, after a long chase, on a very narrow ledge in a
precipice, and apparently bid defiance to his pursuers. At last
he bounded suddenly from a great height, and ran rapidly over
broken rocks and heath for about six hundred yards, with the
pack of dogs close at his heels, who ultimately brought him up,
but were kept at bay by his horns.
From the mountain goats we pass naturally to the mountain sheep,
who, though nominally domesticated, are so little subject to human
interference and live so great a portion of their lives at large upon
the hills, that as compared with our dull southern breeds they may
almost be regarded as wild animals. Very familiar to every one who has
spent much time on the mountains is the sharp “sneeze” of the sheep as
he gives warning to his fellows that a stranger is approaching. Writing
of the Welsh sheep, half a century ago, Cliffe tells us that they
differed entirely in their habits from those of an enclosed country.
“Roaming wherever inclination leads them, confined by few or no fences,
they are obliged for mutual defence against foxes, ravens, and other
birds of prey, to form parties of ten or twelve, of which number, if
one perceives anything advancing towards the little flock, he turns
and faces the object, when, if its appearance be hostile, he warns his
companions by a shrill whistling noise, and the whole scamper off to
the more inaccessible wilds.”
Since this was written, the extent of many pasture-lands has been
lessened; but there are still places where the sheep have a whole
mountain, or several mountains, to roam over, and live in a state of
considerable freedom and liveliness. An old man who used to spend the
summer months at the top of a high pass in the Lake District, where
he sold refreshments to tourists, and slept in a little hut built
right into the steep hillside, told me that his only discomfort arose
from the noisy gambols of the sheep, who kept him awake by disporting
themselves on his grassy roof after nightfall. Thus, like the lady in
_Locksley Hall_, he must lie and ponder--
In the dead unhappy night, and when the _ram_ is on the roof.
Imagine any one suffering in this manner from the frolics of our
south-country _muttons_!
The mountain lambs, especially, have a rare sprightliness and beauty,
and there is scarcely a more lovely picture to be seen among the
hills than one of these superb little creatures poised intrepid on
a high rock or wall as the traveller passes below, and looking down
on him with an innocent and wistful curiosity. Such a sight makes it
pitiful to remember to what base uses man has turned the sheep, and
how degraded is the domestic breed, as we commonly see it, from the
glorious wild animals described in the _Mountains of California_. “The
domestic sheep,” says Muir, “is expressionless, like a dull bundle of
something only half alive, while the wild is as elegant and graceful as
a deer, every movement manifesting admirable strength and character.
The tame is timid; the wild is bold. The tame is always more or less
ruffled and dirty; while the wild is as smooth and clean as flowers of
his mountain pastures.”
The sheep of the Welsh hills and the Cumbrian fells is a sort of
connecting-link between Muir’s _ovis montana_ and the silly creature
of our meadows; but it must be admitted that he sadly lacks the
marvellous climbing powers of his wilder relative, for when he ventures
on the tempting ledges of turf that intersect the sheer precipices
he sometimes shares the fate of the “meek mountain lamb” in Scott’s
“Helvellyn.”
I once saw an unfortunate “cragbound” sheep on a narrow and very
dangerous terrace that overhangs the great eastern verge of Tryfan,
where, having eaten all the grass on the ledge, she was peering
nervously about, trying to summon up the courage to make a backward
leap to safety. After descending from the mountain, I called at the
farm below, and got a promise that the sheep should somehow be saved
from its plight; but on the following day I found the same tragedy
proceeding. Again I sought and received assurances from the shepherds
that they would go with ropes to the rescue, but as I had to leave
Wales the next morning I never learnt the sequel, which I fear may have
yielded more satisfaction to the ravens than to the sheep.
If the mountain sheep must be deemed half wild, can less be said of
that lean, gaunt, hungry, savage, but highly intelligent animal, the
sheep-dog of Cumberland or Wales? It is one thing to see these “friends
of man” in their educated capacity, collecting or dispersing the sheep
under their owner’s vociferous bidding; it is quite another thing to
see them gorging ravenously on a carrion sheep, and slinking off with
wolfish demeanour when disturbed. Historians may tell us that “the
last wolf” was killed among these mountains some centuries back; but
we make bold to doubt that assertion when surrounded by half a dozen
bristling “Gelerts” in the wilds of Wales, for it would then seem
that not a little of the character of _canis lupus_ has survived in
domestication. For my part, I would rather meet a Welsh bull on an
open grass-slope than a pack of these snarling sheep-dogs when their
master is out of call, for I can bear witness that at such a moment
Mr. Jack London’s choicest wolf-stories are brought too forcibly to
mind, and that “the call of the wild” has an unpleasant reality of its
own. The traveller who has been followed halfway up Carnedd Llewelyn
by a troop of these “white-fangs,” in an interval of their duties at
the sheep-washing in Llyn Llugwy, will be able to form at least an
“intelligent anticipation” of how it feels to be pursued by real wolves
in the forests of the north-west. The mountain sheep-dog is still half
a wolf, and not without reason has Mr. Thompson Seton made sheep-dogs
the heroes of two of the chapters of his _Wild Animals I have Known_.
I have incidentally mentioned the bull; and who that has walked much in
Carnarvonshire or Merioneth will be so pedantic as to deny the bull his
place among the _fauna_ of these districts? Theoretically, no doubt, he
must be classed with the domestic; but in practice there are times when
his domesticity is apt to be doubted by the wayfarer, and when even
the cheery assurances of the Welsh herdsman (if within hail) that “she
will do nothing to you,” leave much to be desired. Turned out in early
summer on the roadways and hill-slopes, with that national disregard
for Saxon weaknesses which has characterized the Cymry from of old,
the black bulls of these hilly regions are an element that has to be
taken into account, together with winds and waters, in the traveller’s
plan of campaign. I have known a party of tourists compelled to elect
between meeting the angry animal or relinquishing the direct ascent--a
choice between bull and “bwlch”--and unanimously agreed in favour of
a rearward move. I once camped with a friend for a fortnight in an
artist’s van, pitched on an open plot in an upland valley where a big
bull was pastured; and when we heard him in the darkness playfully
scratching back or sharpening horns on our door-step, we bethought
us of those weird stories of wild life in the backwoods, where the
dwellers in the lonely log-hut hear the long-drawn sniff of the
strolling bear, as he “samples” them under their bolted door at night.
In some of the valleys round Snowdon there is a strange-looking breed
of black and white Scandinavian cattle, whose appearance at close
quarters on a dark night is rather eerie, because only the white part
of each animal is easily visible, and the traveller has the spectacle
of a detached head, or shoulder, or hind-quarter, as the case may be,
confronting him through the gloom.
As a rule, it is only in spells of great heat, such as occasionally
descend upon the mountains, that the bulls are really dangerous, and
then they are seldom approached, even by the herdsman, without the
aid of dogs. It is said that the most ominous symptom on the bull’s
part is when, instead of the usual shrill bellow, he gives vent to
a low querulous grumbling sound, which seems to imply a deeply felt
long-cherished grievance; at such times it is wise to give him a wide
berth. After all, can we men complain, if the bull sometimes shows
himself dissatisfied with our treatment of his fellows? Who knows
but that his splenetic outbursts have some reference to the massacre
of his kith and kin at the hands of the “family butcher,” or to the
savage dietetic habits of the very people who denounce _him_ as “the
savage brute”? What I have thought a little hard, however, is that no
discrimination is made by the bull between beef-eater and vegetarian,
and that the peaceful pilgrim who has not tasted sirloin for over forty
years is compelled to skulk up the hill under cover of a stone wall
as guiltily as the shameless intruder who has a beef-sandwich in his
pocket. Some vegetarians, I believe, advocate the wearing of a badge;
there would be more to be said in favour of the distinction, if the
black bulls of Snowdonia would consent to recognize such flag of truce.
We see, then, that the Cambrian and Cumbrian hills, though far less
richly populated than they were some centuries back, have yet no
little interest to offer us in the races of non-human peoples, wild or
half-wild, that inhabit them--races whose life is much more closely
intertwined with the life of the mountain itself, and more responsive
to its varying moods and seasons, than that of the shepherd born and
bred on its slopes, not to speak of the summer visitor who comes there
for mere pastime or recreation.
VI
The Barren Hillside
We talk of the barrenness of the mountains, and barren in a sense
they are, when contrasted with the teeming wealth of the plain, yet
the bleakest of them, if studied with sympathy and insight, will be
found to have a living and life-giving freshness of its own. Now and
then, perhaps, when face to face with some scene of more than common
severity, we are tempted to exclaim, with Scott:
The wildest glen, but this, can show
Some touch of nature’s genial glow:
On high Benmore green mosses grow,
And heath-bells bud in deep Glencoe,
And copse on Cruchan-Ben;
But here, above, around, below,
On mountain or in glen,
Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower,
Nor aught of vegetative power,
The weary eye may ken.
But austereness, too, has its place, and often is to the mountains what
fertility is to the fields, not a blemish, but a glory; and if grey
crag[19] and wild hillside bear no visible fruitage, yet many are the
spiritual crops which may be gathered from them by the understanding
eye and mind.