or two, nor yet in a week or two: it is only to him who has gone many
times over the ground that such secrets will disclose themselves; but
even the passing rambler must be struck, as I was, by the number of
noteworthy plants that Teesdale wears, so to speak, upon its sleeve. The
globe-flower revels in the moist meadows; so, too, do the water-avens
and the marsh-cinquefoil, nor is the butterfly orchis far to seek; and
though the yellow marsh-saxifrage may remain hidden, there is no lack of
the yellow saxifrage of the mountain (_saxifraga aizoides_), to console
you, if it can, for the absence of its rarer cousin. The cross-leaved
bedstraw (_galium boreale_), another North-country plant, luxuriates on
low wet cliffs by the river.
Last, but not least, in the later months of summer, is the mountain
thistle (_carduus heterophyllus_), or the "melancholy thistle" as it is
often called--a title which seems to have small relevance, unless all
plants of a grave and dignified bearing are to be so named. Do men
expect to gather figs of thistles, that they should demand the simple
gaiety of the cowslip or the primrose from such a plant as this, whose
rich purple flowers, spineless stem, and large parti-coloured
leaves--deep green above, white below--mark it as one of the most
handsome, as it is certainly the most gracious and benevolent of its
tribe?
As I walked down the valley, on a wet morning in July, to take train at
Middleton, twenty-four hours of rain had turned the river through which
I had easily waded on the previous day, into a flood that was terrifying
both in aspect and sound. It was no time for flower-hunting; but even
then the wonders of the place were not exhausted; for along the
hedgerows I saw in plenty that same stately thistle, which in most
districts where it occurs is viewed with some interest and curiosity,
but in Teesdale is a roadside weed--subject, I was shocked to observe,
to the insolence of the passers-by, who, knowing not what they do,
maltreat it as if it were some vulgar pest of the fields, a thing to be
hacked at and trampled on. Even so, I saw in it a discrowned king, who
"nothing common did or mean."
XXII
APRIL IN SNOWDONIA
It is Easter Sunday . . . the hills are high, and stretch away to
heaven.--DE QUINCEY.
SO wrote De Quincey in one of his finest dream-fugues. There seems, in
truth, to be a certain fitness in the turning of men's thoughts at the
spring season to the heights of the mountains, where, as nowhere else,
the cares and ailments of the winter time are forgotten; and it is a
noticeable fact that these upland districts are now as thronged with
visitors during Easter week as in August itself. As I write, I am
sitting by a wood fire under a high rock in a sheltered nook at Capel
Curig, with a biting north-easter blowing overhead and an occasional
snow-squall whitening the hillsides around, while the upper ridges are
covered in places with great fields and spaces of snow, which at times
loom dim and ghostly through the haze, and then gleam out gloriously in
the interludes of sunshine. The scenery at the top of Snowdon, the
Glyders, Carnedd Llewelyn, and the other giants of the district has been
quite Alpine in character. The wind has drifted the snow in great
pillowy masses among the rocks, or piled it in long cornices along the
edges, and on several days when the air was at its keenest, the snow
fields have been crisp and firm, and have afforded excellent footing as
a change from the rough "screes" and crags; at other times, when the sun
has shone out warmly, the snow has been soft and treacherous, and the
spectacle has often been seen of the too trustful tourist struggling
waistdeep.
Mid-April in Snowdonia, when March has been cold and wet, shows scarcely
an advance from midwinter as far as the blossoming of flowers is
concerned. Down by the coast the land is gay with gorse and primroses,
but in the bleak upland dales that radiate from the great mountains
hardly a bloom is to be seen; nor do the river banks and marshy pastures
as yet show so much as a kingcup, a spearwort, or a celandine. The
visitors have come in their multitudes to walk, to climb, to cycle, to
motor, to take photographs, or to take fish, as the case may be; but if
one of them were to confess that he had come to look for flowers he
would indeed surprise the natives--still more if he were to point to the
upper ramparts of the mountains, among the rocks and snows and clouds,
as the place of his design.
Yet it is there that we must climb, if we would see the pride of the
purple saxifrage, the earliest of our mountain flowers, blest by
botanists with the cumbrous name of _saxifraga oppositifolia_, and
often grown by gardeners, who know it as a Swiss immigrant, but not as a
British native. A true Alpine, it is not found in this country much
below 2,000 feet, and in Switzerland its range is far higher, for it is
a neighbour and a lover of the snows. Small and slight as it may seem,
when compared with some of its more splendid brethren of the Alps, it
has the distinction of a high-bred race, the character of the genuine
mountaineer. It is a wearer of the purple, in deed as well as in name.
But our approach to the home of the saxifrage is not to be accomplished
without toil, in weather which is a succession of boisterous squalls.
Under such a gale we have literally to push our way in a five-mile walk
to the foot of the hills, and as we climb higher and higher up the
slopes we have a ceaselesstussle with the strong, invisible foe who
buffets us from every side in turn, while he hisses against the sharp
edges of the crags, or growls with dull subterranean noises under the
piles of fallen rocks. As for the streams, they are blown visibly out of
their steep channels and carried in light spray across the hillside,
while sheets of water are lifted from the surface of the lake. Not till
we reach the base of the great escarpment which forms the north-east
wall of the mountain are we able to draw breath in peace; for there,
under the topmost precipices, flecked with patches of snow, is a strange
and blissful calm. But now, just when our search begins, the mists,
which have long been circling overhead, creep down and fill the upland
hollow where we stand, cutting off our view not only of the valley below
but of the range of cliffs above, and confining us in a sequestered
cloudland of our own. Still climbing along a line of snowdrifts which
follows a ridge of rocks, and which serves at once as a convenient route
for an ascent and a safe guide for a return, we scan the likely-looking
corners and crevices for the object of our pilgrimage. At first in vain;
and then fears begin to assail us that we may be doomed to
disappointment. Can we have come too early, even for so early a plant,
in a backward season? Or have some wandering tourists or roving knights
of the trowel (for such there are) robbed the mountain-side of its
gem--for this saxifrage, owing to the brightness of its petals on the
grey and barren slopes, is so conspicuous as to be at the mercy of the
passer-by.
But even as we stand in doubt there is a gleam of purple through the
mist, and yonder, on a boss of rock, is a cluster of the rubies we have
come not to steal but to admire. What strikes one about the purple
saxifrage, when seen at close quarters, its many bright flowerets
peering out from a cushion of moss, is the largeness of the blossoms in
proportion to the shortness of the stems; a precocious, wide-browed
little plant, it looks as if the cares of existence at these wintry
altitudes had given it a somewhat thoughtful cast. At a distance it
makes a splash of colour on the rocks, and from the high cliffs above
it hangs out, here and there, in tufts that are fortunately beyond
reach.[17]
[Footnote 17: For a charming description of the purple saxifrage, see
_Holidays in High Lands_, by Hugh Macmillan (1869).]
Having paid our homage to the flower, we leave it on its lofty throne
among the clouds, and descend by snow-slopes and scree-slides to the
windy, blossomless valley beneath. A month hence, when the season of the
Welsh poppy, the globe-flower, and the butterwort is beginning, the
reign of the purple saxifrage will be at an end. To be appreciated as it
deserves, it must be seen not as a poor captive of cultivation, but in
its free, wild environment, among the remotest fastnesses of the
mountains.
The wild animal life on the hills, so noteworthy in the later spring,
seems as yet to have hardly awakened. We saw a white hare one afternoon
on Carnedd Llewelyn, but that was the only beast of the mountains that
crossed our path during eight days' climbing, nor were the birds so
numerous as might have been expected. The croak of the raven was heard
at times, in his high breeding-places, and on another occasion there was
a triple conflict in the air between a raven, a buzzard, and a hawk. On
the lower moorlands the curlew was beginning to arrive from his winter
haunts by the seashore, and small flocks of gulls, driven inland by the
winds, were hovering over the waters of Llyn Ogwen, where we saw several
of them mobbing a solitary heron, who seemed much embarrassed by their
onslaught, until he succeeded in getting his great wings into motion.
But if bird-life is still somewhat dormant in these lofty regions, there
have been plenty of human migrants on the wing. From our high
watch-tower, we saw daily, far below us, the long line of
motorists--those terrestrial birds of prey--speeding along the white
roads, and flying past a hundred entrancing spots, as if their object
were to see as little as possible of what they presumably came to see.
Flocks of cyclists, too, were visible here and there, avoiding the cars
as best they could, and drinking not so much "the wind of their own
speed," in the poet's words, as the swirl and dust of the motors; while
on the bypaths and open hillsides swarmed the happier foot-travellers,
pilgrims in some cases from long distances over the mountains, or
skilled climbers with ropes coiled over their shoulders and faces set
sternly towards some beetling crag or black gully in the escarpment
above. In one respect only are they all alike--that they are birds of
passage and are here only for the holiday. Soon they will be gone, and
then the ancient silence will settle down once more upon the hills, and
buzzard and raven will be undisturbed, until July and August bring the
great summer incursion.
XXIII
FLOWER-GAZING _IN EXCELSIS_
I gazed, and gazed, but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.
WORDSWORTH.
THERE is no more inspiring pastime than flower-gazing under the high
crags of Snowdon. The love of flowers reveals a new and delightful
aspect of the mountain life, and leads its votaries into steeps and
wilds which, as they lie aloof from the usual ways of the climber, might
otherwise escape notice. It must be owned that our Cumbrian and Cambrian
hills are not rich in flowers as Switzerland is rich; one cannot here
step out on the mountain-side and see great sheets of colour, as on some
Alpine slope; and not only must we search for our treasures, but we must
know _where_ to search. They do not grow everywhere; much depends on the
nature of the soil, much on the altitude, much on the configuration of
the hills. There are great barren tracts which bear little but heather
and bilberry; but there are rarer beds of volcanic ash and calcareous
rock which are a joy to the heart of the flower-lover.[18]
[Footnote 18: See _The Flora of Carnarvonshire_, by John E. Griffith,
and _A Flora of the English Lake District_, by J. G. Baker, two books
which are of great value in showing the localities of mountain plants.]
Again, one is apt to think that on those heights, where the winter is
long and severe, it is the southern flanks that must be the haunt of the
flowers; in reality, it is the north-east side that is the more
favoured, owing to the fact that the hills, in both districts, for the
most part rise gently from the south or the south-west, in gradual
slopes that are usually dry and wind-swept, while northward and eastward
they fall away steeply in broken and water-worn escarpments. It is here,
among the wet ledges and rock-faces, constantly sprayed from the high
cliffs above, where springs have their sources, that the right
conditions of shade and moisture are attained; and here only can the
Alpines be found in any abundance. The precipices of Cwm Idwal and Cwm
Glas, in Wales, and in the Lake District the east face of Helvellyn, may
stand as examples of such rock-gardens.
The course of a climber is usually along the top of the ridge, that of
the botanist at its base; his paradise is that less frequented region
which may be called the undercliff, where the "screes" begin to break
away from the overhanging precipice, and where, in the angle thus
formed, there is often a little track which winds along the hillside,
sometimes rising, sometimes falling, but always with the cliff above
and the scree-slope below. Following this natural guidance he may
scramble around the base of the rocks, or along their transverse ledges,
and feast his eyes on the many mountain flowers that are within sight,
if not within reach.
It is a fine sport, this flower-gazing; not only because all the plants
are beautiful and many of them rare, but because it demands a certain
skill to balance oneself on a steep declivity, while looking upward,
through binoculars, at some attractive clump of purple saxifrage, or
moss-campion, or thrift, or rose-root, or globe-flower, as the case may
be.[19] To the veteran rambler especially, this flower-cult is
congenial; for it supplies--I will not say an excuse for not going to
the top, but a less severe and exacting diversion, which still takes him
into the inmost solitudes of the mountain, and keeps him in unfailing
touch with its character and genius.
[Footnote 19: In Parkinson's _Theatrum Botanicum_ (1640) it is remarked
of rose-root that it grows "oftentimes in the ruggiest places, and most
dangerous of them, scarce accessible, and so steepe that they may soon
tumble downe that doe not very warily looke to their footing."]
I have spoken of Snowdonia in the spring; let us view it now in the
fulness of June or July, when its flora is at its richest. It is not
till you have climbed to a height of about two thousand feet that the
true joys of the mountains begin. At first, perhaps, as you follow the
course of the stream you will see nothing more than a bunch of white
scurvy-grass or a spray of golden-rod; but when you reach the region
where the thin cascade comes sliding down over the moist rocks, and the
topmost cliffs seem to impend, then you will have your reward, for you
have entered into the kingdom of the Alpines.
Suppose, for example, that you stand at the foot of the narrow ridge of
Crib-y-Ddysgl, a great precipice which overhangs the upper chambers of
Cwm Glas on the northern side of Snowdon, with an escarpment formed of
huge slabs of rock intersected by wet gullies, narrow niches, and
transverse terraces of grass. Looking up, to where the Crib towers
above, you will see a goodly array of plants. Thrift is there, in large
clumps as handsome as on any sea-cliffs; rose-root, the big
mountain-stonecrop; cushions of moss-campion, which bears the local name
of "Snowdon pink"; lady's-mantle, intermixed with the reddening leaves
of mountain-sorrel; Welsh poppy, not so common a flower in Wales as its
name would suggest; and at least three kinds of beautiful white
blossoms--the starry saxifrage, the mossy saxifrage, and the shapely
little sandwort (_arenaria verna_), as fair as the saxifrages
themselves, and what higher praise could be given? The flower-lover can
scarcely hope for greater delight than that which the starry saxifrage
will yield him. It has been well said that "one who has not seen it
growing, say, in some rift of the rock exposed by the wearing of the
mountain torrent, cannot imagine how lovely it is, or how fitly it is
named. White and starry, and saxifrage--how charming must that which has
three such names be!"[20]
[Footnote 20: _Wild Flowers of Scotland_, by J. H. Crawford.]
Another lofty rock-face, similar in its flora to that of Snowdon, is the
precipice at the head of Cwm Idwal, near the point where it is broken by
the famous chasm of the Devil's Kitchen. Hereabouts is the chief station
of the _Lloydia_, or spiderwort, a rather rare and pretty Alpine, a
delicate lily of the high rocks, bearing solitary white flowers veined
with red, and a few exceedingly narrow leaves that resemble the legs of
a spider. Unlike most mountain plants, it has a considerable local
reputation; and during its short flowering season in June one may
observe small parties of enthusiasts from Bangor or Carnarvon,
diligently scanning the black cliffs above Llyn Idwal, in the hope of
spying it. The place where I first saw the _Lloydia_ in blossom was Cwm
Glas; but I had previously noticed its long thin leaves in two or three
places around the Devil's Kitchen.
The haunts of the Alpine meadow-rue (_thalictrum alpinum_) are similar
to those of the spiderwort; and a most elegant little plant it is, its
gracefully drooping terminal cluster of small yellowish flowers being
borne on a simple naked stem, whereas its less aristocratic relative,
the smaller meadow-rue (_t. collinum_), which is much commoner on these
rocks, is bushier and more branched. I had many disappointments, before
I rightly apprehended the true Alpine species; once distinguished, it
cannot again be mistaken.
It was to a chance meeting in Ogwen Cottage, at the foot of Cwm Idwal,
with Dr. Lloyd Williams, a skilled botanist who had brought a party of
friends to visit the home of the _Lloydia_, that I owed my introduction
to another very beautiful inhabitant of those heights, the white
mountain-avens, known to rock-gardeners as _dryas octopetala_. Happy is
the flower-gazer who has looked on the galaxy, the "milky way," of those
fair mountain nymphs--for the plant is in truth an oread rather than a
dryad--where they shed their lustre from certain favoured ledges in a
spot which it is safer to leave unspecified. I must have passed close to
the place many scores of times, in the forty or more years during which
I had known the mountain; yet never till then did I become aware of the
treasure that was enshrined in it!
But of all the glories of Cwm Idwal--rarities apart--the greatest, when
the summer is at its prime, is the array of globe-flowers. This splendid
buttercup usually haunts the banks of mountain streams, or the sides of
damp woods, in the West country and the North; its range is given in the
_Flora of the Lake District_ as not rising above nine hundred feet; but
in Snowdonia, not content to dwell with its cousins the kingcups and
spearworts in the upland valleys, it aspires to a far more romantic
station, and is seen blooming in profusion at twice and almost three
times that height on the most precipitous rock-ledges.[21] One may gaze
by the hour, enraptured, and never weary of the sight.
[Footnote 21: In the Cairngorm mountains, the globe-flower ascends to a
height of 3,000 feet (see Mr. Seton Gordon's _Wanderings of a
Naturalist_); in the Alps to 8,000.]
I have by no means exhausted the list of notable Snowdonian flowers that
are native in the two localities of which I have spoken, or in a few
other spots that are similarly favoured by geological conditions: the
sea-plantain, the mountain-cudweed, the stone-bramble, the queer little
whitlow-grass with twisted pods (_draba incana_), its still rarer
congener the Alpine rock-cress, and the _Saussurea_, or Alpine
saw-wort--all these, and more, are to be found there by the pilgrim who
devotedly searches the scriptures of the hills. But of the _Saussurea_
some mention will have to be made in the next chapter; for it is now
time to turn from Cambria to Cumbria, from the "cwms" and "cribs" of
Snowdon to the "coves" and "edges" of Helvellyn.
XXIV
COVES OF HELVELLYN
I climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn.
SCOTT.
SO far I have spoken more of the Welsh mountain flowers than of those
belonging to Lakeland; but the difference between the two districts, in
regard to their respective floras, is not very great, and with a few
exceptions the plants that are native on the one range may be looked for
on the other. The _Lloydia_ is found in Snowdonia only; and Wales can
boast, not a monopoly, but a greater plenty of the moss-campion and the
purple saxifrage. On the other hand, the Alpine lady's-mantle and the
yellow mountain-saxifrage, both abundant in Cumberland, are absent from
Carnarvonshire; and this is somewhat of a loss, for the common
lady's-mantle, charming though it is, lacks the beauty of the Alpine,
and the yellow saxifrages, as they hang from the rocks like a phalanx of
tiny golden shields--each with bright petals and pale green sepals
radiating from a central boss--are among the greatest ornaments of the
fells.
Again, the lovely little bird's-eye primrose is a North-country plant
which is not found in Wales; against which may be set, perhaps, that gem
of the damp mosses on certain Welsh streamsides, the ivy-leaved
bell-flower. More characteristic of Lakeland than of Snowdonia, though
not peculiar to it, are those two very beautiful flowers, the one a
child of the swamp, the other of the high pastures, the grass of
Parnassus, and the mountain-pansy; and to conclude the list, the
snow-saxifrage and the mountain-avens are about equally rare in both
countries--the avens, indeed, is confined to one or two stations, where
fortunately it is little known.
Helvellyn, as a mountain, is very inferior to Snowdon, nor indeed can it
compete in grandeur with its own Cumbrian neighbours, the Great Gable
and Scafell; but among visitors to the Lakes it has nevertheless an
enduring reputation, largely due to the poems in which Scott and
Wordsworth have sung its praises. Accordingly, during the tourist
season, the anxious question: "Is that Helvellyn?" may often be
overheard; and on a fine day all sorts of incongruous persons may be
seen making their way up the weary slopes that lead from Grasmere to its
crest. I once observed a gentleman in a top-hat toiling upward in the
queue; on another occasion I witnessed at the summit a violent quarrel
between a married couple, the point of dispute (on which they appealed
to me) being whether their little dog was, or was not, in danger of
being blown over the cliffs. As the west wind was certainly very strong,
and Helvellyn had already been associated with the story of a dog's
fidelity, I ventured to advise a retreat.
On the east side, however, where its "dark brow" overlooks the Red Tarn,
and throws out two great lateral ridges--on the right, in De Quincey's
words, "the awful curtain of rock called Striding Edge," and Swirrel
Edge on the left--Helvellyn is a very fine mountain, and what is more to
the present purpose, is botanically the most interesting of all the
Lakeland fells. From Grisedale Tarn to Keppelcove, a distance of full
three miles, that great escarpment, with the several "coves" that nestle
beneath it, is the home of many rare Alpine flowers, corresponding in
that respect with the Welsh rock-faces of Idwal and Cwm Glas; and though
it does not offer so conspicuous a display, or such keen inducements to
flower-gazing, a search along its narrow ledges, and under the impending
crags, home of the hill fox, will seldom disappoint the adventurer.