_ULLSWATER, HOME OF BEAUTY_
To see Ullswater is to love it, and to love a scene is to often travel
that way. I often travelled there even when so to do meant an eighteen
miles' tramp there and an eighteen miles' tramp back again. I have
walked there to go fox-hunting, and some rare chases I have
enjoyed--crags of Fairfield and Helvellyn, yes! (I have tramped back,
too, with shins bumped and skinned through scrambling among the rocks,
and oh, so weary and footsore.) But we are not fox-hunters always in the
land of the fells, whatever our detractors say. We do not see beauty in
the same places as they. The "splendidly rugged" hillside of the rambler
is only "bad ground" to the shepherd kind; and the waterfall thundering
in the gloomy dell, so admired by the emotional, arouses little interest
with those who in wild winter have to wrestle with torrents as foamy and
rock-tortured as the finest peep of Aira or Lodore. We see beauty in the
small things of our everyday life--in our wee birds and springing
flowers (when the flock does not make us too busy to notice them). I
have seen--I almost said I know, but that is too big a boast for even
those who dwell there--Ullswater under almost all conditions. My first
view was from far-off Kentmere High Street. Only a small portion was
visible, still that much _was_ Ullswater. The next time I saw its long
stream from Helvellyn, but the time was not ripe for going down. My feet
were toward Thirlmere, and the other lake had to wait awhile.
Shortly, however, I had opportunity--I started ere sunrise, and met the
light on the top of High Street. I was still a novice at fellscraft, and
knew but little of the lay of the land. Still, with face set so sure
toward Ullswater, neither map nor guide-book was required to keep
direction. It is wonderfully deceptive, that descent of Fusedale. From
the ridge it seems that ten easy minutes down the slope would bring one
there, but an hour passed and I had not reached Howtown bay. On the way
I had a distant glimpse of some deer. On the fells hereabouts a herd of
native red deer roam in a wild state. Sometimes outlyers go far south,
and more than once they have been chased miles by hounds. A forester
looks after the herd--no light matter when there is no keep on the
uplands and the half-starved animals break into the turnip fields, or
drive the sheep away from the hay thrown out for their benefit. The
forester also regulates the constitution of the herd: occasionally there
is a day of thinning out redundant stags or hinds. The red deer was till
comparatively recent times known on several of our wilder fells. At
Ennerdale a piece of rugged fell known as the Side was a rallying point
for them, and from this they ranged the mountains to Buttermere and
Wastdale, where some few homed about craggy Scawfell. There was a wild
herd on the Rydal fells for long, and within the memory of persons not
long dead deer used to wander occasionally on the moorland between
Duddon and Esk. Stories of how their fathers fought the deer in winter
from the stackyards are often told by the dwellers on Ullswater farms.
Hereabouts, too, nested the golden eagle long after it was extinct in
less stern parts. The last was recorded as shot on the Martindale fells
by a local named Sisson, about seventy years ago. The bird had been
unknown since 1790, when a mature specimen was shot or trapped in the
wilds near Buttermere. The birds and beasts of Ullswater at that period
would make an interesting list indeed: kites, eagles, bittern; martens,
badgers, wild cats, and the like. I don't believe there are any wild
cats now, but the sweetmart is not yet extinct, and latterly there has
been a recrudescence of the badger. The foumart is a noisome beast, and
capable of doing great damage in a poultry roost. Dogs will hunt it with
glee, but are content to corner it, not to bowl it over.
[Illustration: ULLSWATER, FROM GOWBARROW PARK
A sultry June morn]
I was disappointed this first time I reached Howtown to find that the
road did not follow the lake shore. Instead it curves backward over the
ridge between Hallin fell and wall-like High Street. This is a bit of
bleak road when the Helm wind is tearing up the lake, but the meadows
around the wyke are so snug that tents are not seldom there until
November. Hardy campers these! Martindale is a really odd corner--I
think it got its distinctive atmosphere under the forest laws of Rufus;
for except a new bridge and maybe half a dozen red-painted carts,
everything has the indefiniteness of hoary age. Perhaps it is a
knowledge of its old-world fauna which makes me place Martindale so far
remote in the ages. The road passes the church; the growing greyness of
this makes its exact year of erection difficult to fix. The clergyman in
charge for long had the smallest direct revenue in the diocese of
Carlisle, and the benefice was often awaiting acceptance. Nowadays,
however, the three pounds yearly is greatly improved upon.
[Illustration: ULLSWATER: SILVER BAY]
Past Sandwick there is a return to the mountain track winding in bracken
and cevin. Then for miles, now a hundred feet up the hillside, now at
its level, the lake is skirted. There is a succession of fine views,
near and distant: of the steamer slipping through the deep blue water
within stone's throw of the crags, for the lake-bed falls in a precipice
here; of sheep climbing and grazing on the shelving hillside, and
timorously rushing off at our approach; of the swell when a breeze lifts
it along, bursting green on the boulders and throwing shimmering spray
into the air; of birches in their summer radiance; of thin green shadows
of ghylls where rivulets are slipping down to the lake through piles of
moss; of the bramble, and the fox-glove and the heather; of the juniper,
the rowan, and the bilberry; of green Glencoin, and mine-torn
Glenridding; of thorny Gowbarrow; of the hilltops embosoming Matterdale
and its quaint old church, where the sacramental wine was long kept in a
wooden keg, and where many a dalesman was baptized "of riper years,"
opportunity not serving to traverse the weary miles from home when he
was an infant. One dweller at least in remote Martindale (whose chapel
was then unused for want of a cleric), can tell of his "kursennin'"
here. He was a big lad when the family party were rowed across Ullswater
and clomb the brow by Aira Force. The little church he remembers well,
especially he noted a big bass fiddle hung on the wall near the font.
Fifty years or so later he revisited the place and pointed out where the
fiddle had hung on that memorable day. One of the fiddlers left his
instrument here between services, out of the way of the lads. The
village orchestra was a feature in old dales churches--we were far
behind other parts in adopting the harmonium or the organ. At one place
the parson's wife used to lead the singing on a concertina--not very
many years ago.
Rounding the fell corner, there is a glorious view of Helvellyn and
Fairfield, empurpled with scree, rifted with ravines, solid, smooth
crags sheering skyward, often aloof from the bulk of the mountain. A
ragged line etched against the sunny green fell shows the Striding
Edge's top, that other ruggedness ending with a sharp peak is Swirrel
Edge with Catchedecam. Between these two, and beneath the wide breast of
Helvellyn is that romantic rock-basin where lies Red Tarn, the most
notable and highly elevated of our mountain waters. Trout caught here
are remarkably thick in the shoulder. Our ancient writers make the char
also occupant, but no one living has, so far as I know, ever seen one
there. As the water is deep, attempts were made half a century ago to
introduce that fish; but whether ova, fry, or fullgrown fish were turned
in, their enemies accounted for them so well that not one was observed
again. An ancient friend of mine--an angler and poacher of wide repute
in the old lath-fishing days--once told me a wonderful story--"aye, an'
I've caught 'em mesel', up to a poond weight"--of a unique race of fish
dwelling in the fringe of the mist at Red tarn. He called them the
silver trout. Their scales were silvery, their fins small, their flesh
dainty. Only in the deepest pools beyond the reach of a shore rod were
they found; to the lath with its trailing baits alone they fell. I have
from other sources heard a similar story, but no one lights upon the
silver trout in these days. Old Tom was quite unlettered; it is unlikely
that he ever heard that old books asserted that the skelly or gwyniad,
as well as the char, was to be found here.
In peak and frowning crag, in shadowy slack and deep cove, Helvellyn
extends far to westward, finally breaking away at the sun-filled hollow
of Grisedale. Westward again, the debacle, an amazing tangle of
mountains, some throwing a mossy green shoulder into view, others jagged
precipices or walls of scree--Fairfield and Cofa Pike, St. Sunday's Crag
and Hartsop Dodd, Red Screes, Kirkstone, and many another. But to
describe yard by yard the opening view were tedious indeed; when one has
climbed almost every moor and mountain within sight, and walked in many
of the coves and valleys, one is apt to have much to say which must be
familiar to all who know the Lake Country by repute.
[Illustration: ULLSWATER: THE SILVER STRAND
Afterglow]
There is little of history in the Patterdale of to-day; the inrush of
tourists has caused the old-style cottages and farms to be renovated
almost out of existence. Bay windows and upper floors take the place of
bottle-glass casements and the old camp bedsteads which stood in
recesses of the one long room, and, by their great size, formed really
chambers within a chamber. To see Ullswater fully we must be upon it. A
boat is secured and we float down the Goldrill, river of pretty name and
raging furies of floods, under the bridge. Hereabouts another rivulet
joins us, to-day in quiescent a mood as ours; but it has trilled down
steep Seat Sandal, eddied in dark Grisedale tarn over the crown of
Dunmail, burst in mad career down the dale of the Wild Swine
(Grisedale), losing pace in the level meadows, and now in a murmur it
glides through the laced alder shade to fall in here. The united
currents send us out on to the lake itself, carrying us clear of the
wide tangle of grasses growing in the silt the floods carried from
Kirkstone and Helvellyn. This upper basin of Ullswater is where the
great lake trout was last to be found. Though it is several years since
an undeniable example, with hooked underjaw, was caught, the existence
of the fish was no myth. Legend makes too much of its size, asserting
that fish sixty pounds in weight were landed. At flood time the great
trout, states Clarke, writing about a century and a half ago, ascend the
Goldrill, as also in autumn at the time for spawning. This in his day
gave rise to the sport of spearing, to join in which, he observes that
gentlemen came from great distances. The redds, a series of
sand-bottomed pools, were visited at night; a torch showed where the
fish lay, and the sportsman, armed with a three-pronged spear, kept
striking as long as a big trout was within his reach. The ordinary lake
trout to-day hasten into the river when a flood is due, after there has
been heavy rain on the fells. As our boat is pulled from the shore, the
grand panorama of mountains begins to show; the bluffs behind the
village dotted with white hawthorn, and the flat lands by the river are
not yet dwarfed by more mighty forms. Place fell is the most commanding
sight, two thousand feet of rock rising in unbroken slope from the
water's edge. A level tongue of land is now quite close by. The whitened
current pouring through acres of silt is silent testimony of mining
activity. This stream has its little tragedy. Once the char inhabited
Ullswater, and spawned in Glenridding beck. When the mines began to be
worked many breeding char were poisoned by pollution. Others to save
themselves did not shed their spawn, but returned to the lake. A few
afterwards left their ova on the shallows and among the water grasses,
but the following seasons the females held back their spawn altogether.
The stock of char became rapidly depleted, and for years there has been
no trace of the kind in the lake.
[Illustration: HAZY TWILIGHT, HEAD OF ULLSWATER]
My taste is not for big hotels, but I will admit that the Ullswater,
with its back to wooded Glenridding, has a splendid site. It faces
across the lake the bloomy sweep of Place fell, and Helvellyn, with a
tumult of hills around it, is also visible from its grounds. At the foot
of its garden is the steamer pier. To me there seems little of
anachronism about the Ullswater boats--I wonder why? At Windermere the
yachts always seem out of sympathy; at Coniston this is glaringly so
(such opinion does not prevent my using them when convenient);
Derwentwater's toy fleet plies between Portinscale and Lodore, from one
palatial hotel to its neighbour. The boats here are more business-like.
The sharp, near fells, the deep blue of the water, make one think of
beauteous Norwegian fiords, of arms of the sea where the rise and fall
of tide is scarcely marked on the upspringing rocks, rather than a lake
of quiet England.
Our boat is turned inshore, and we feel the coolness of nearing
woodlands. Above our heads oaks are clinging in thin profusion to every
ledge of a lofty crag--this is Stybarrow, the rocky hill dividing
Glenridding from its eastern neighbour. Nowadays a main road has been
cut through the foot of the fell, just above the level of the water, but
a disused zigzag track shows the way dalesmen of the past travelled to
market. Difficult was the track for friends, with many a rut and spongy
mire, sharp curves and slippery ascents; but for foes from northward it
was for centuries impassable. Little has history to tell of the head of
Ullswater; the customs of the country-side, the lack of fortified
places, of even a Border tower or of a cattle keep, tell plainly of
uninvaded peace. But though their lands were free from harrying, the
yeomen of Patterdale were ever willing to fight under the banners of
Greystoke and Yanwath. And for thus leading the foray the wild Scots of
Liddelsdale once almost dealt them retribution. A strong band stole
across the Esk, and during the night rode hard up the Eden valley and
across the grassy fells towards the lake. Marching unsignalled, from an
unusual direction, their presence was first noted by the shepherds as
they rose from sleeping in the folds on Helvellyn. One ran to rouse the
glen, the others made a rush down the mountain wall between Glencoin and
their home, hoping to hold the road, the key of the situation, long
enough for their friends to rally and beat back the invasion. Mounsey
was a stout yeoman, had seen service long and hard in Border campaigns,
and he it was who took command. He placed his few where the road
narrowed between two crags and was steepest, where the rocky ground
prevented the dreaded charge of the enemy's horse. The Scots came riding
on, unaware that their presence had been discovered till a flight of
arrows whizzed from rock and bush. Thrown into disorder by these, a
second volley sent the raiders hot-trod to the foot of the hill. Here
they formed an attack, leaving their ponies, taking what cover they
could find. They reached the belt of timber, and carefully crept through
it without finding an enemy, for the men of the dale had after their
ambush retired, so that the shock with the full weight of the Scottish
force could not be brought to bear on them at a disadvantage.
[Illustration: A MOUNTAIN PATH, SANDWICK, ULLSWATER]
The leader halted at the upper edge of the forest to survey the
situation. To his eye, there was no way of winning up that lofty hill
while the bows were plied from shelter secure. Accordingly he halted,
sending scouts to right and left. The chief had certain knowledge of the
number of men-at-arms in Patterdale; he had brought a party strong
enough to crush their utmost resistance, and had cut off their chance of
alarming their allies of the low country. One scout told that away to
the left the fell became a terrific precipice, along the wooded ledges
of which a party might move to attack the dalesmen's rear. Fifty were
accordingly detached to force the way of the cliff. Safely they passed
through the wood of Glencoin, then swarmed cautiously from ledge to
ledge of the dizzy crag; the blue lake beneath received the stones they
dislodged. Of a sudden the leader of the forlorn hope reeled, threw up
his arms, fell back and down--down--down. Undaunted by his wild cry and
the splash which after a pause showed that his body had fallen from
ledge to ledge into the lake, from their path in mid-air the Scots
sought the archer in vain. Another man, with a strange gurgle, swung
round, grasping at the cloth-yard that had transfixed him. He too fell
into the abyss. When the tenth had been struck, one of the Scots espied
the enemy. So far away, and deep below, that he looked merely a doll, an
archer stood on a rock by the shimmering water. Mounsey had divined
their plan, and with his strong arm and sure aim saved Patterdale from
invasion.
The Scottish leader waited hour after hour for the wild slogan which
should proclaim that his men had attacked the ridge, then a few
stragglers returned from the face of the cliff and told him of the
disaster which had befallen. The word was given at once "to horse," and
the raiders sped back to the Border. For his service the men of
Patterdale claimed the Mounsey as their king. He was given the best
house and land, on condition that he, and his heirs for ever, should be
able and willing to lead the dalesmen to victory. For centuries the
family held their post with distinction. The first Scottish rabble to
break into the glen were the men of the Forty-Five. And they did not get
far beyond, for the men of Troutbeck manned the narrow head of their
dale and, unaided by the Royal army, beat back the invasion. For which
the courage of Patterdale is still slighted across the fell. The last
King of Patterdale flourished a century ago; his estates were afterwards
sold to the Marshall family. The name and lineage of Mounsey still
exists in the dale.
I find legend a too-fascinating topic; get the boat pushed forward if we
have to see Aira Force this golden afternoon. The wavelets rattle gay
under the bow as we sweep past soft Glencoin, with a solitary house
glimmering through the trees--Seldom Seen, once, it is said, the
jewel-house of the Howards in time of serious war. But the greatest
beauty is on Place fell. In bands of green and brown and golden yellow,
in purple streak and white, it rises rock on rock, slope on slope, more
the presiding genius of Ullswater than vaunted but distant Helvellyn.
The rugged Gowbarrow we are approaching is tame and smooth compared with
the giant across the water. Tree-fringed, with brake of bramble and low
bushes, the road runs along the northern shore; beyond bay after bay we
find it keeping pace with us apparently. It is a level run for the
cyclist, and happy is he who first at sunset approaches by it. On a
curve of white shingle we land; the field is glorious with water
buttercups, and the last wild roses star the brakes around. The gorge of
Aira is quite half a mile from the lake. Leaving the road Lyulph's tower
cannot be evaded by the observing eye. Who Lyulph was is a disputed
point among the Doctors; his name was given to this place after he was
long dead: he wasn't foolish enough to design or build this erection.
Relief comes to the soul when, rising up the hill, you see the meadows
where the daffodils blow, the place where Dorothy Wordsworth pointed out
to her gifted brother the flowers dancing in the breeze and struck the
chord which gave us the fine poem known as "The Daffodils." Aira Force
too has its story of love and romance, which is briefly stated thus: A
lady dwelling beneath knotty Gowbarrow loved a knight of Cumbria, and
they were wont to tryst by the waterfall. The lover, to prove his love
and gain honour, joined a crusade. No news of him came from Syria for
years--he was a prisoner there--and the lady, lonely and much troubled,
began to fear that he had fallen. At length the knight broke prison and
hastened home. At night he approached the trysting place of old, and
through the trees saw a lady in white moving. He sprang forward to meet
her--it was his own true love for whom he had jeopardised his life--just
as she came to the crag which overhangs the torrent's leap. In his arms
he held her a moment, then she started back, back, and out of
sight--down that terrible rock, into the gloom of the spout. After her
leapt the brave knight--he found her in the whirlpool, caught her, and
reached the shore. And there, as he bent over her, she opened her eyes a
moment and recognised him; with his name on her lips she died. The
sudden shock, the fall, the deep waters, had beaten out the frail life
of the somnambulist. By the waterfall the knight built him a cell, and,
a hermit, dwelt in the solitude.
The hollow of Aira is a gloomy place: moist-loving ferns spread over the
rocks, there is wet moss everywhere, spray ever hangs dank in the air.
In height Aira is great among our waterfalls. In flood-time it is a
glorious medley: flying waters, shiny fangs of rock, dripping trees and
grass and weed and fern.
[Illustration: BROUGHAM CASTLE, PENRITH]
Although the lower portions of the lake, toward Pooley, do not come into
this brief survey, they are far from unlovely, though to most the
beauties do not begin till Hallin fell is abreast and wild Gowbarrow.
The eastern reaches are more domesticate--green swelling hills and wide
woodlands, with many-acred spaces of smooth pasture. To the south of the
lake's outlet is Swarth fell, a haunt of straight-necked foxes (I have
been at their chase from far-off Kentmere), and to the north is
Dunmallet, another of those curious "teeth" found among our lake
mountains.
My finest experience of Ullswater was on a summer evening. Our boat, to
quiet pulling, stole out into the upper lake. The sun was nearly down to
Fairfield. When about opposite Silver Bay oars were taken in--their
solemn steady chunking sound seemed to mar the harmony of even. A few
men and women were wandering the paths by the mouth of Glenridding, but
no one was afloat. Away over the horizon, behind the fells, thunder is
still echoing. An hour ago raindrops dimpled the lake's surface; the air
was dark and brooding, every few seconds a vivid flash of lightning rent
the gloom, and blast after blast of heaven's trumpet seemed to shake the
mountains to their deep-set foundations. After storm, calm--and
refreshment and peace at eventide. From westward pour the generous,
kindly beams of light, pouring out new life to rain-dashed fields and
woodlands, giving new songs and glorious to the birds. What a glory of
colouring mantles field and fell and forest. Though a wide gate is
cleared for the sun in its latest hour, dense clouds are still overhead,
and the north-east is ink-black. The sun touches the topmost ridge of
Fairfield with living fire, and just beneath is a deep fold of violet
vapour. Place fell is glorious with purple light, its riven ghylls
mysterious with a deeper tinge. Along the craggy face of Helvellyn a
soft veil of mist is rolling: from hollow Grisedale come cloudy wreaths
and streams which bathe the mountain-top ere they dissolve in the amber
even. Around us Ullswater spreads, blue as the bluest of our summer
skies; its ripples, like frolicking children, rejoice in careless mirth.
Now the sun hides behind the turmoil of mountain-tops, and we are in a
vale of glorious shadow. The faint lake-current and the soft-moving
breeze drift us ever down the mere: we are past Glenridding, the
climbing shadow has risen far up Place fell. Above, all is clear and
golden; a sharp line passing along the hillside marks off the zone of
light. The sheep are wandering upward as the day retires; from the
summits they will greet the first gleams of to-morrow. The dusk gathers
in every hollow; night is softly, reluctantly, drawing in. Still the
drama of sunset ebbs tardily on the rocky heights; a wee wafer of cloud,
the last of its tribe it seems, is drawing away from the flaming west.
As it curls and rolls its course up the sky, its brilliance fades to
crimson, to thin purple, and, as a grey lock, it fades out of sight at
the zenith. Boats are now astir on our Ullswater: hardly can there live
a man, or woman, so dead to the beauties of Nature as to willingly stay
indoors on such an eventide. So time passes: we drift beneath the bulk
of Place fell, then the oars are put out and in the shade we steal
along. Grey-blue are the heights behind Glencoin, all the glory has gone
from the western sky. The clouds have crept out of the north, and
streaks of pulsing night-glow come up in their stead. Brown the woods on
the hillside above us, and a silence of sleep reigns supreme. A rill
falling into the lake rattles pleasantly; the soft whistle of an otter,
the wing-beat of a bird hawking the night moths, the sudden splash as a
trout falls from its leap into mid-air, break pleasantly on the ear.
Look above: the mountains shoulder to great frowning heights, but the
marvel of all is the sky. There seems no firmament, no bound to the
ranging eye. Only the gate of heaven itself seems withdrawn from vision.
Star-drift, in soft luminous puffs, besprinkles the great violet dome:
planet and fixed star, great and small, dust over the immeasurable width
with ten million sparkling lights. On most nights it is the stars that
seem so far away, but to-night, by quiet Ullswater, they discover
themselves as milestones near us on the way to that distant blue curtain
which is the nearer boundary of heaven itself. More comprehensible is
the element beneath us, where over plunging depths are mirrored the
twinkling stars. There again the light is a veil to a mystery, but not a
boundless one. For we know what manner of things lie beneath the waters:
their pits have been plumbed and their secrets discovered. There is a
flush of pale primrose in the east: the moonrise. How the the frail
light glows! We turn the corner of Hallin fell toward Howtown ere the
full orb at last rolls into sight. In a few minutes the fells are
radiant with the peaceful beams, and a broad track of silver leaps down
the bay.