these mountains to our descendants as mountains or as something else.
For if we allow our company-promoters to carve and tunnel the crags,
to enlarge and discolour the lakes, to poison the streams, and to
drive away the wild life from the hills, are we not once more killing
the goose that laid the golden eggs? These hills of ours are small as
compared with the great mountains of Europe, but they are as beautiful,
and they are unique, and once ruined they cannot by any ingenuity be
restored. It is true that Switzerland is employed in the same manner
in spoiling the Jungfrau and Mont Blanc, but it must be remembered
that Switzerland has a practically unlimited reserve of Alps, while
we have but few mountains to spoil.[23] At present they are still
something more than a playground for gymnasts, or a picnic-ground for
tourists; they are mountains, a piece of unsophisticated wild Nature in
our midst, and as such, their value, to those who know it, is beyond
words. Let them still be a playground and a picnic-ground by all means,
but under such conditions as will preserve their native features and
their higher character. One would think that a nation which can spend
thousands of millions on a foreign war might afford to become the owner
of its own mountains at home!
The pretence that there is something selfish and anti-democratic in
the desire to save our mountain scenery from destruction is absurd;
on the contrary, it is entirely owing to its devotion to the fetish
of “property” that the public has so long allowed these places to
be exploited for private gain, and has stood by in utter apathy and
indifference while a handful of speculators and traders have benefited
at the expense of the community. Nor do we give to our mountains even
that protection which other antiquities enjoy. What would be said if a
Bill were submitted and passed in Parliament to authorize some private
company to pull Westminster Abbey or Stonehenge to pieces and make a
profit out of the ruins? It is no exaggeration to say that the Society
for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments would have the whole nation
at its back in its resistance to such vandalism; yet a mountain such as
Snowdon is a far more ancient monument than Stonehenge or the Abbey,
and the vandalism which is now being successfully accomplished is of a
still more insensate kind.
It is a hollow fallacy, too, to suppose that it is “democratic” to
fill up and destroy the rare silences and solitary spaces that a land
may still possess, on the plea that they cannot be enjoyed by all.
They _can_ be enjoyed by all who are fitted to enjoy them, and the
benefits that result from such enjoyment are in the long-run shared by
all the nation alike. To make a railway to the top of a mountain such
as Snowdon, and then to argue that it is a blessing to the weakly folk
who could not otherwise get there, is to overlook the fact that it is
not to the cripples, but to the community, that the mountain belongs.
“Whatsoever,” says the communist Reclus, “may be the future of man, or
the aspect of the world which he may create for himself, solitude, in
that portion of Nature which is left free, will become more and more
necessary to those men who wish to obtain renewed vigour of thought,
far from the conflict of opinions and voices. If the beautiful spots
of the world should one day become a mere rendezvous for the worn and
weary, they who love to live in the open air will have nothing left
them but to take refuge in a bark on the midst of the waves.… Happily
the mountain will always contain the sweetest places of retreat for him
who flies from the beaten paths of fashion.”
Wherein, then, lies the remedy for the dangers which I have described?
Within recent years there has been much rejoicing over the rescue
of two or three estates in the Lake District, such as Catbells and
Gowbarrow, from the clutch of the speculator, and all honour is
certainly due to those by whom these victories were won; but it is
evident that large sums of money cannot for ever be raised by private
subscription to buy off the day of doom, and that while one favoured
tract is being thus protected, another less fortunate one is being
lost. We cannot save our mountains by these piecemeal purchases from
the harpies who threaten them; such methods are too troublesome, too
costly, too purely local to be successful in the main. There is only
one thorough solution of the problem, and that is to nationalize
such districts as Snowdonia, Lakeland, the Peak of Derbyshire, and
other public holiday-haunts, and so to preserve them for the use and
enjoyment of the people for all time. If parks, open spaces, railways,
tramways, water, and other public needs can be municipalized, why not
mountains? It is impossible to over-estimate the value of mountains
as a recreation-ground for soul and body, yet, while we are awaking
to the need of maintaining public rights in other directions, we are
allowing our mountains--in North Wales and elsewhere--to be sacrificed
to commercial selfishness. If Snowdon, for instance, had been purchased
by the public twenty years ago, the investment would have been a great
deal more profitable than those in which we usually engage; but while
we are willing to spend vast sums on grabbing other people’s territory,
we have not, of course, a penny to spare for the preservation of our
own.
What we need, in short, is the appointment of mountain
sanctuaries--highland parks, where the hills themselves, with the wild
animals and plants whose life is of the hills, shall be preserved in
their wildness as the cherished property of the people--consecrated
places, where every one shall be entitled to walk, to climb, to rest,
to meditate, to study Nature, to disport himself as he will, but
_not_ to injure or destroy. When we truly care for these hills of
ours, we shall remove them from the tender mercies of the mine-owners
and railway lords, who now seek profit in their disfigurement, and
shall place them under a council of mountaineers and naturalists and
nature lovers who understand and reverence them, with the instruction
that they shall so administer their charge as to add to the present
happiness and the permanent wealth of the nation. How long will it take
us, hag-ridden as we are by the nightmare of private ownership, to
awake to the necessity of such a change?
Pending that blessed time, I would point out to those public-spirited
rich men (and we know there are such) who are ever looking for some
useful outlet for their wealth, that here, in the shadow of this
storm-cloud that overhangs our mountain scenery, they have a golden
chance of ennobling themselves; for it is simple truth that the
millionaire who should buy a Snowdon, and make free gift of it to the
people, would be a benefactor for all time, and would far outstrip in
lasting philanthropy any donor of churches or charities, hospitals
or libraries, scholarships or seats of learning. For mountains are
the holiest ground that the heart of man has consecrated, and their
educating influence is even more potent than that of books; they are
the true authors, the standard works, printed in the most enduring
type, that cheer and brace, as no written words can do, the minds of
those who study them.
In what state, then, shall we hand on to those who follow us these
sacred temples of Nature, which, as even so old-fashioned a writer as
Wordsworth asserted, are “a sort of national property, in which every
man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to
enjoy”? The day cannot be far distant when our choice must be made, and
it is between a sanctuary and a slag-heap that we must choose.
_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_
FOOTNOTES
[1] _The Cambrian Sketch Book_, by R. R. Davies.
[2] _Rambles among the Mountains, Valleys, and Solitudes of Wales_, by
J. H. Cliffe, 1860.
[3] “The simple people who till the soil of Westmorland and Cumberland
cannot view in any other light than that of childish ‘laking’ the
migrating propensities of all the great people of the south who
annually come up like shoals of herrings from their own fertile
pastures to the rocky grounds of the north.”--_De Quincey._
[4] The very word “to climb” is beginning to be appropriated by
the gymnasts, in whose records we find mention of meetings with
“non-climbing parties” at the summits. Scott’s verse, “I climbed the
dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn,” will evidently have to be rewritten.
[5] See the well-known lines in Scott’s “Helvellyn”:
“Dark green was that spot mid the brown mountain-heather,
Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretched in decay.”
[6] Dr. G. A. Selwyn, then Bishop of Lichfield.
[7] “I suppose that I feel the same awe when on their summits that many
do on entering a church. To see what kind of earth that is on which you
have a house and garden somewhere, perchance! It is equal to a lapse
of many years. If you have been to the top of Mount Washington, let
me ask, what did you find there? Going up there and being blown on is
nothing. We never do much climbing while we are there, but we eat our
luncheon, etc., very much as at home. It is after we get home that we
really go over the mountain, if ever. What did the mountain say? What
did the mountain do?”--_Thoreau._
[8] Captain Cameron, of Glen Brittle House, Isle of Skye.
[9] The expression was used in E. D. Clarke’s _Tour through Wales_,
1791.
[10] The word “glidder” is given in the _English Dialect Dictionary_
as meaning a loose stone. Cf. the line in Scott’s “Shepherd’s Tale”:
“Among the glidders grey.”
[11] “I ken the place, as mony does, in fair daylight, but how to find
it by moonshine, amang sae mony crags and stanes, as like to each
other as the collier to the deil, is mair than I can tell.”--_Heart of
Midlothian._
[12] A proof of the sentiment attaching to Snowdon may be found in the
number of counties which claim to have a distant view of it from their
own highest points; we are told, for example, that it can be seen from
the Worcestershire Beacon, at Malvern, across nearly a hundred miles
of hill and plain. From what I have been able to discern of the Welsh
heights as viewed from the hills of Shropshire, at a range of about
fifty or sixty miles, I suspect that “Snowdon” must often be understood
as a generic term, and that outlying summits such as the Arenig Fawr,
near Bala, sometimes do duty for their chief.
[13] _Description of the Scenery of the Lakes_, 1823.
[14] W. Gilpin, 1786.
[15] See _Climbing in the British Isles_, by W. P. Haskett Smith, i. 86.
[16] Cf. the name of the well-known Nant Ffrancon, meaning “the Valley
of the Beavers.”
[17] W. Gilpin’s _Observations on the Mountains of Cumberland_, 1786.
[18] See an interesting article on “Wild Goats in Wales,” in _Country
Life Illustrated_, March 2, 1901. Also Mr. J. G. Millais’ _British
Mammals_, iii. 213.
[19] “Probably these crests of the earth are for the most part of
one colour in all lands, that grey colour of antiquity which Nature
loves; colour of unpainted wood, weather-stain, time-stain; not
glaring nor gaudy; the colour of all roofs, the colour of things that
endure.”--Thoreau, _Journal_, x. 452.
[20] For a description of the flowers of the fells, I may be permitted,
to refer the reader to my book _The Call of the Wildflower_, which
contains chapters on the flora of Snowdonia and Helvellyn.
[21] _Description of the Scenery of the Lakes._
[22] In the good old days it must have been a practice to build privies
actually _over_ small streams, as may be seen from ruins near disused
cottages in Wales and Cumberland.
[23] There is an English branch of the League for the Preservation of
Swiss Scenery, which has powerful support. Does not charity in this, as
in other matters, begin at home?