Early Morn--High Force--Rock and Water--A Talk with the
Waitress--Hills and Cottages--Cronkley Scar--The Weel--Caldron
Snout--Soothing Sound--Scrap from an Album--View into
Birkdale--A Quest for Dinner--A Westmoreland Farm--Household
Matters--High Cope Nick--Mickle Fell--The Boys' Talk--The
Hill-top--Glorious Prospect--A Descent--Solitude and Silence--A
Moss--Stainmore--Brough--The Castle Ruin--Reminiscences.
The next day dawned, and a happy awaking was mine, greeted by the same
rushing voice, no longer solemn and mysterious, but chanting, as one
might imagine, a morning song of praise. I looked out, and saw with
pleasurable surprise the fall full in view from the window: a long white
sheet of foam, glistening in the early sunbeams.
All the slope between the inn and the fall is covered by a thick
plantation of firs, ash, hazel, and a teeming undergrowth, and through
this by paths winding hither and thither you have to descend. Now the
path skirts precipitous rocks, hung with ivy, now drops gently among
ferns to an embowered seat, until at a sudden turn the noise of the fall
bursts grandly upon you. A little farther, and the trees no longer
screening, you see the deep stony chasm, and the peat-stained water
making three perpendicular leaps down a precipice seventy feet in
height. It is a striking scene, what with the grim crags, the wild
slopes, and the huge masses lying at the bottom and in the bed of the
stream; and the impressive volume of sound.
We can scramble down to the very foot of the limestone bluff that
projects in the middle, leaving a channel on each side, down one of
which a mere thread of water trickles; but in time of flood both are
filled, and then the fall is seen and heard in perfection. Now we can
examine the smooth water-worn cliff, and see where something like
crystallization has been produced by a highly-heated intrusive rock.
And here and there your eye will rest with pleasure on patches of moss
and fern growing luxuriantly in dripping nooks and crannies.
You see how the water, rebounding from its second plunge, shoots in a
broken mass of foam into the brown pool below, and therein swirls and
swashes for a while, and then escapes by an outlet that you might leap
across, talking to thousands of stones as it spreads itself out in the
shallow bed. Standing with your back to the fall, and looking down the
stream, the view, shut in by the trees on one side, by a rough grassy
acclivity on the other, is one that lures you to explore it, striding
along the rugged margin, or from one lump of rock to another.
Then returning to the diverging point in the path, we mount to the top
of the fall. Here the scene is, if possible, wilder than below. The
rock, as far as you can see, is split into a thousand crevices, and
through these the river rushes to its leap. Such a river-bed you never
saw before. The solid uprising portions are of all dimensions, and you
step from one to the other without first feeling if they are steady.
Here and there you climb, and coming to the top of the bluff you can
look over and watch the water in its headlong plunge. The brown tinge
contrasts beautifully with the white foam; and lying stretched on the
sun-warmed rock, your eye becomes fascinated by the swift motion and the
dancing spray. Then sit awhile on the topmost point and look up stream,
and enjoy the sight of the rapids, and the multitudinous cascades.
Though the rocks now lift their heads above water you will notice that
all are smoothly worn by the floods of ages. The view is bounded there
by a mighty high-backed fell; and in the other direction brown moorlands
meet the horizon, all looking glad in the glorious sunshine.
I loitered away two hours around the fall in unbroken solitude, and
returned to the inn to breakfast before all the dew was dry. The house
was built about twenty-five years ago, said the waitress, when the road
was made to connect the lead mines of Alston Moor, in Cumberland, with
the highways of Durham. There was not much traffic in the winter, for
then nobody travelled but those who were compelled--farmers,
cattle-dealers, and miners; but in summer the place was kept alive by
numerous visitors to the fall. Most were contented with a sight of High
Force; but others went farther, and looked at Caldron Snout and High
Cope Nick. Sometimes a school came up for a day's holiday; they had
entertained one the day before--two wagon-loads of Roman Catholic
children. True enough, our omnibus had met them returning.
The house looks across the valley to Holwick Fell, and were it not for
the trees in front, would have but a bare and, at times, desolate
prospect. The whole premises are as clean as whitewash can make them;
even the stone fences are whitewashed. The Duke of Cleveland is
proprietor: he ought to be proud of his tenants.
How glad the morning seemed when I stepped forth again into the sunshine
to travel a few miles farther up the Tees. The road still ascends and
curves into the bleak and lonely fells, which stretch across the west of
Durham and into Cumberland. In winter they are howling wastes, and in
snow-storms appalling, as I remember from painful experience. But in
summer there is a monotonous grandeur about them comparable only with
that of the ocean.
Just beyond the sixteenth milestone from Alston I got over the fence,
and followed a path edging away on the left towards the river. It
crosses pastures, little meadows, coarse swampy patches sprinkled with
flowers; disappears in places; but while you can see the river or a
cottage you need not go astray. There is something about the cottages
peculiar to a hill-country: the ground-floor is used as a barn and
stable, and the dwelling-rooms are above, approached by a stone stair on
the outside. With their walls freshly whitewashed, they appear as bright
specks widely scattered in the wilderness; and though no tree adorns or
shelters them, they betoken the presence of humanity, and there is
comfort in that. And withal they enjoy the purest breezes, the most
sparkling water, flowery meadows, and hills purple with heather when
summer is over. If you go to the door the inmates will invite you to
sit, and listen eagerly to the news you bring. Meanwhile you may note
the evidences of homely comfort and apparent contentment. A girl who was
pulling dock-leaves--"dockans," as she called them--told me they were to
be boiled for the pig.
Ere long Cronkley Scar comes in sight--a tremendous sombre precipice of
the rock known to geologists as greenstone, in which, if learned in such
matters, you may peruse many examples of metamorphic phenomena. And
hereabouts, as botanists tell us, there are rare and interesting plants
to be discovered. The Scar is on the Yorkshire side; but the stream is
here so shallow and full of stones, that to wade across would only be an
agreeable footbath.
Now the stream makes a bend between two hills, and looking up the vale
we see the lower slopes of Mickle Fell--the highest mountain in
Yorkshire. We shall perhaps climb to its summit ere the day be many
hours older.
From the last dwelling--a farm-house--I mounted the hill, and followed a
course by compass to hit the river above the bend. Soon all signs of
habitation were left behind, and the trackless moorland lay before me,
overspread with a dense growth of ling, wearisome to walk through. And
how silent! A faint sound of rushing water comes borne on the breeze,
and that is all.
Then we come to the declivity, and the view opens to the north-west,
swell beyond swell, each wilder in aspect, as it seems, than the other.
And there beneath us glisten the shining curves of the Tees. The compass
has not misled us, and we descend to the Weel, as this part of the river
is called, where for about a mile its channel deepens, and the current
is so tranquil that you might fancy it a lengthened pool. We go no
higher, but after gazing towards the fells in which the river draws its
source, we turn and follow the Weel to a rift in the hill-side. The
current quickens, the faint sound grows louder, and presently coming to
the brink of a rocky chasm we behold the cataract of Caldron Snout. The
Tees here makes a plunge of two hundred feet, dashing from rock to rock,
twisting, whirling, eddying, and roaring in its dark and tortuous
channel. The foam appears the whiter, and the grass all the greener, by
contrast with the blackness of the riven crags, and although no single
plunge equals that at High Force, you will perhaps be more impressed
here. You are here shut out from the world amid scenes of savage beauty,
and the sense of isolation begets a profounder admiration of the natural
scene, and enjoyment of the manifold watery leaps, as you pause at each
while scrambling down the hill-side.
About half-way down the fall is crossed by a bridge--a rough beam only,
with a rude hand-rail--from which you can see the fall in either
direction and note the stony bends of the river below till they
disappear behind the hill. From near its source to Caldron the Tees
divides Durham from Westmoreland, and in all its further downward course
from Yorkshire.
Let me sit for an hour by the side of a fall, and watch the swift play
of the water, and hear its ceaseless splash and roar, and whatever
cobwebs may have gathered in my mind, from whatever cause, are all swept
clean away. Serenity comes into my heart, and the calm sunshine pervades
my existence for months--nay, years afterwards. And what a joy it is to
recall--especially in a London November--or rather to renew, the happy
mood inspired by the waterfall among the mountains!
I have at times fancied that the effect of the noise is somewhat similar
to that described of narcotics by those who indulge therein. The mind
forgets the body, and thinks whatsoever it listeth. Whether or not, my
most various and vivid day-dreams have been dreamt by the side of a
waterfall.
It seems, moreover, at such times, as if memory liked to ransack her old
stores. And now I suddenly recollected Hawkeye's description of the
tumbling water at Glenn's Falls, as narrated in _The Last of the
Mohicans_, which I had read when a boy. Turn to the page, reader, and
you will admire its faithfulness. Anon came a rhyme which a traveller
who went to see the falls of the Clyde sixty years ago, tells us he
copied from the album at Lanark:
"What fools are mankind,
and how strangely inclin'd,
to come from all places
with horses and chaises,
by day and by dark,
to the Falls of Lanark.
"For good people after all,
what is a waterfall?
It comes roaring and grumbling,
and leaping and tumbling,
and hopping and skipping,
and foaming and dripping,
and struggling and toiling,
and bubbling and boiling,
and beating and jumping,
and bellowing and thumping--
I have much more to say upon
both Linn and Bonniton;
but the trunks are tied on,
and I must be gone."
Southey, who read everything, perhaps saw this before he wrote his _Fall
of Lodore_.
And we, too, must be gone; and now that we have seen
"Where Tees in tumult leaves his source
Thund'ring o'er Caldron and High Force,"
we will gather ourselves up and travel on.
But whither? I desired a public-house; but no house of any sort was to
be seen--nothing but the scrubby hill-side, and mossy-headed rocks
peeping out with a frown at the mortal who had intruded into their
dominion. The end of a a meadow, however, comes over the slope on the
other side of the bridge; perhaps from the top of the slope something
may be discerned. Yes, there was a cottage. I hastened thither, but it
proved to be an old tenement now used as a byre. I looked farther, and,
about a mile distant, saw two farm-houses. The view had opened into
Birkdale, and there, on the left, rose the huge, long-backed form of
Mickle Fell, whose topmost height was my next aim, and I could test the
hospitality of the houses on the way thither.
We are now in a corner of Westmoreland which, traversed by Birkdale,
presents diversified alpine features. The valley is green; the meadows
are flowery and dotted with cattle; the hills, stern and high, are
browsed by sheep; and Maize Beck, a talkative mountain stream, flows
with many a stony bend along the bottom--the dividing line between
Westmoreland and Yorkshire. There are no trees; and for miles wide the
only building is here and there a solitary byre.
My inquiry for dinner at the first of the two houses was answered by an
invitation to sit down, and ready service of bread, butter, milk, and
cheese. I made a capital repast, and drank as much genuine milk at one
sitting as would charge a Londoner's supply for two months. The father
was out sheep-shearing, leaving the mother with a baby and four big
children at home. But only the eldest boy looked healthy; the others had
the sodden, unwashed appearance supposed to be peculiar to dwellers in
the alleys of large towns. No wonder, I thought, for the kitchen, the
one living room, was as hot and stifling as a Bohemian cottage. The
atmosphere was close and disagreeably odorous; a great turf fire burned
in the grate, and yet the outer door was kept as carefully shut as if
July breezes were hurtful. I tried to make the good woman aware of the
ill consequences of bad air; but old habits are not to be changed in an
hour. She didn't think that overmuch wind could do anybody good, and it
was best for babies to keep them warm. They managed to do without the
doctor: only fetched him when they must. There was none nearer than
Middleton. Six weeks previously, when baby was born, they had to send
for him in a hurry; but Tees was in flood, and Caldron Snout so full
that the water ran over the bridge; her boy, however, got across, and
rode away the nine miles at full speed on his urgent errand.
What with chairs and tables, racks and shelves, the dresser, the clock,
the settee under the window, three dogs, a cat, and a pigeon--to say
nothing of the family--the room was almost as crowded as the steerage of
a ship. The pigeon--the only one in the dale--had come from parts
unknown a few weeks before of its own accord, and was now a household
pet, cooing about the floor, and on civil terms with the cat. But the
children feared it would die in winter, as they had no peas in those
parts, nothing but grass. Sixty acres of "mowing grass" and a run for
sheep comprise the farm.
While the Ordnance Survey was in Westmoreland, two sappers lodged in the
house for months; and the eldest son, an intelligent lad, had much to
tell concerning their operations. What pains they took; how many times
they toiled to the top of Mickle Fell only to find that up there it was
too windy for their observations, and so forth. Sometimes a stranger
came and wanted a guide to High Cope Nick, and then he went with his
father. Two photographers had come the preceding autumn, and took views
of the Nick on pieces of paper with a box that had a round glass in it;
but the views wasn't very good ones.
High Cope Nick, as its name indicates, is a deep notch or chasm in the
hills overlooking the low country of Westmoreland about four miles from
this Birkdale farm. "It's nigh hand as brant[D] as a wall," said the
boy; "you can hardly stand on't." It is one of the scenes which I
reserve for a future holiday.
[D] Steep.
The woman could not hear of taking more than sixpence for my dinner, and
thought herself overpaid with that. The two boys were going up the fell
to look after sheep, so we started together, crossed the beck on
stepping-stones, followed by two dogs, and soon began the long ascent.
There is no path: you stride through the heather, through the tough
bent, across miry patches, and stony slopes, past swallow-holes wherein
streams of water disappear in heavy rains; and find at times by the side
of the beck a few yards of smooth sweet turf. The beck is noisy in its
freakish channel, yet pauses here and there and fills a sober pool,
wherein you may see fish, and perchance a drowned sheep. I saw four on
the way upwards, and the sight of the swollen carcases made me defer
drinking till nearer the source. I could hardly believe the lads' word
that fifteen hundred sheep were feeding on the hill, so few did they
appear scattered over the vast surface.
"How many sheep do you consider fair stock to the acre?" asked Sir John
Sinclair during one of his visits to the hills.
"Eh! mun, ye begin at wrang end," was the answer. "Ye should ax how
many acres till a sheep." Of such land as this the North Riding contains
four hundred thousand acres.
Besides the sheep, added the youth, "there's thirty breeding galloways
on the hill. There's nothing pays better than breeding galloways. You
can sell the young ones a year or year and a half old for eight pounds
apiece, and there's no much fash wi' 'em."
When the time came to part, I sat down and tried to give the boys a peep
at their home through my telescope. But in vain; they could distinguish
nothing, see nothing but a haze of green or brown. On the other hand,
they could discern a sheep or some moving object at a great distance
which I could not discover at all with the glass. They turned aside to
their flock, and I onwards up the hill. The beck had diminished to a
rill, and presently I came to its source--a delicious spring bubbling
from a rock, and took a quickening draught.
At length the acclivity becomes gentle, the horizon spreads wider and
wider, and we reach the cairn erected by the sappers on the summit of
Mickle Fell, 2580 feet above the sea--the highest, as before remarked,
of the Yorkshire mountains. Glorious is the prospect! Hill and dale in
seemingly endless succession--there rolling away to the blue horizon,
here bounded by a height that hides all beyond. In the west appears the
great gathering of mountains which keep watch over the Lake country,
there Skiddaw, there Helvellyn, yonder Langdale Pikes, and the Old Man
of Coniston; summit after summit, their outlines crossing and recrossing
in picturesque confusion. Conspicuous in the north Cross Fell--in which
spring the head-waters of Tees--heaves his brown back in majestic
sullenness some three hundred feet higher than the shaggy brow we stand
on. Hence you can trace the vale of Tees for miles. Then gazing
easterly, we catch far, far away the Cleveland hills, and, following
round the circle, the blue range of the Hambletons, then Penyghent,
Whernside, and Ingleborough, with many others, bring us round once more
to the west. Again and again will your eye travel round the glorious
panorama.
Mickle Fell is one of the great summits in the range described by
geologists as the Pennine chain--the backbone of England. Its outline is
characteristic of that of the county; bold and abrupt to the west;
sloping gradually down to the east. Hence the walk up from High Force or
Birkdale calls for no arduous climbing, it is only tedious. From the
western extremity you look down into the vale of the Eden, where the
green meadows, the broad fields of grain, dotted with trees and bordered
with hedgerows, appear the more beautiful from contrast with the brown
tints of the surrounding hills.
Now for the descent. I scanned the great slope on the south for a
practicable route, and fixed beforehand on the objects by which to
direct my steps when down in the hollows--where scant outlook is to be
had. Lowest of all lies what appears to be a light green meadow; beyond
it rises a Mickle Fell on a small scale: I will make my way to the top
of that, and there take a new departure. All between is a wild expanse
of rock and heather. A sober run soon brought me to the edge of a beck,
and keeping along its margin, now on one side, now on the other,
choosing the firmest ground, I made good progress; and with better
speed, notwithstanding the windings, than through the tough close
heather. Every furlong the beck grows wider and fuller, and here and
there the banks curve to the form of an oval basin smooth with short
grass; favourite haunts for the sheep. The silly creatures take to
flight nimbly as goats at the appearance of an intruder, and I lie down
to enjoy the solitude. The silence is oppressive--almost awful. Shut in
already by the huge hill-sides, I am still more hidden in this hollow.
The beck babbles; the fugitive sheep all unseen bleat timidly; a curlew
comes with its melancholy cry wheeling round and round above my head;
but the overwhelming silence loses nothing of its force. At times a
faint hollow roar, as if an echo from the distant ocean, seems to fill
all the air for an instant, and die mysteriously away. It is a time to
commune with one's own heart and be still: to feel how poor are
artificial pleasures compared to those which are common to all--the
simplest, which can be had for nothing--namely, sunshine, air, and
running water, and the fair broad earth to walk upon.
Onwards. The beck widens, and rushes into a broad stony belt to join a
stream hurrying down the vale from the west. I crossed, and came
presently to the supposed bright green meadow. It was a swamp--a great
sponge. To go round it would be tedious: I kept straight on, and by
striding from one rushy hummock to another, though not without
difficulty in the middle, where the sponge was all but liquid, and the
rushes wide apart, I got across. Then the smaller hill began: it was
steep, and without a break in the heather, compelling a toilsome climb.
However, it induces wholesome exercise. From the top I saw Stainmoor,
and as I had anticipated, the road which runs across it from Barnard
Castle into Westmoreland. I came down upon it about four miles from
Brough.
It is a wild region. A line of tall posts is set up along the way, as in
an alpine pass, suggestive of winter snows deep and dangerous. By-and-by
we come to a declivity, and there far below we see the vale of Eden, and
descend towards it, the views continually changing with the windings of
the road. Then a hamlet, with children playing on the green, and geese
grazing among the clumps of gorse, and trees, and cultivation; and all
the while the hills appear to grow more and more mountainous as we
descend. Then Brough comes in sight--the little hard-featured
Westmoreland town--whitewashed walls, blue slate roofs, the church a
good way off on an eminence, and beyond that, on a grassy bluff, the
ruins of a castle partly screened by trees.
I wanted rest and refreshment, and found both at the _Castle Inn_. An
hour later I strolled out to the ruin. The mount on which it stands
rises steeply from the Helbeck, a small tributary of the Eden, and
terminates precipitously towards the west. The keep still rears itself
proudly aloft, commanding the shattered towers, the ancient gateway, the
dismantled walls and broken stair, and the country for miles around.
Fallen masses lie partly buried in the earth, and here and there above
the rough stonework overhangs as if ready to follow. While sauntering
now within, now without, you can look across the cultivated landscape,
or to the town, and the great slope of Helbeck Fell behind it; and you
will perhaps deem it a favourable spot to muse away the hour of sunset,
when the old pile is touched with golden light. Thick as the walls are,
Time and dilapidations have made them look picturesque. One of the
spoilers was William the Lion of Scotland, who finding here a Norman
fortress in 1174, took it, along with other Westmoreland strongholds;
and was taken himself in the course of the same year at Alnwick. The Rey
Cross on Stainmoor--still a monumental site--marked the southern limit
of the Scottish principality of Cumberland; hence, the hungry reivers
north of Tweed had always an excuse for crossing over to beat the bounds
after their manner. Twice afterwards was Brough Castle repaired, and
burnt to a shell. The second restoration was carried out in 1659 by the
Lady Anne Clifford, Countess Dowager of Pembroke, who recorded the fact
on a stone over the entrance, enumerating all her titles, among which
were "High Sheriffess by inheritance of the county of Westmoreland, and
Lady of the Honour of Skipton," and ending with a text of
Scripture--Isaiah lviii, 12. After the last fire, whosoever would
pillaged the castle; the stone bearing the Countess's inscription was
taken down, and used in the repair of Brough mill, and the ruins became
a quarry, out of which were built sheds and cottages. The large masses
of masonry, which now lie embedded in the earth, fell in 1792.
According to antiquaries the castle occupies the centre of what had been
a Roman station; for Brough was the ancient Verterae, where coins of the
emperors have been dug up, and the highway along which the legions
marched to and from Carlisle, or the Picts' Wall, is still traceable,
known in the neighbourhood as the Maiden Way.
It was a lovely evening. The sun went down in splendour behind the
Cumbrian hills, and when the radiance faded from the topmost summits,
and gave place to dusky twilight, I went back to mine inn.