Henry S. Salt

“ Our chains fall from us—the small cramping chains of lifelong habit—and we go free. We awake out of the deadly torpor of our everyday “occupations,” and we live. And excellent as is the physical exaltation of climbing—the toil and triumph of the ascent—there is also an intellectual and spiritual element in the mountain-passion, which can lift us out of ourselves, and show us, from a higher plane of feeling, as no mere book-knowledge can do, the true proportions and relations of things. ”

“ The singing of the stream below, the deep croak of the raven as he sails on his straight course overhead, the shrill cry of the wheeling buzzard, the bleat of a sheep and even the noise of a detached stone falling from the cliff to the screes, come to us with a significance which would hardly be intelligible elsewhere. The wind, too, has some strange things to tell us, as it tears itself into shreds on the rocks, or lifts the water from the tarns and streams and dashes it in spray to the sky, or startles us with muffled subterranean sobbings as we cross some exposed ridge. ”

“ Not less delightful is that close-fitting vestment of the hills, which follows so faithfully each ripe curve and contour, and so trimly encircles the projecting bosses of rock—the short crisp sward, on which the mountain sheep [Pg 103] have their pasture. Even the stoniest tracts are softened, here and there, by these verdant interspaces, and it is refreshing to see a steep saddle of turf flung across a craggy ridge, or a streak of greenery running far down, like a path, among the grey and pathless screes. ”

“ Ennerdale, wild and primitive, its Pillar Rock rising like a pulpit in the midst; Wastdale, plain to the verge of ugliness, even as an unfurnished room is plain, yet full of the sense of the great heights that wall it round; the solitude of upper Eskdale, with its mighty waterfalls and mountain pools; the more sociable Duddon, and the pastoral greenery of Langdale. Surely nowhere else in Great Britain can we stand on a hill-top with seven such valleys at our feet! ”

“ Imagine yourself, reader, perched on the roof, so to speak, of a mountain—a colossal roof, some fifteen hundred feet above the valleys below, where for sparrow on housetop you have raven or buzzard—and, further, imagine the angle of this roof to be a ridge of spiky and crumbling rock, averaging a foot in width at the top, and dropping almost sheer on the north side into the hollow of Cwm Glas, while on the south it falls away in an extremely steep slope, which the timid would call a precipice, but which offers an abundance of friendly ledges and notches as foothold. ”

“ However prosperous our ascent may have been, there is always the something left undone, the ridge unclimbed or valley unexplored, which is the spur to further effort. Here, if nowhere else in the land, the sense of satiety is unknown; and it is to this mental tonic, even more than to the bracing air of the heights, that we owe the unwearied spirit which nerves us to walk more leagues upon the mountains than we could walk miles upon the plain. For in the lowlands we walk with the body only; in the highlands we walk also with the mind. ”

“ Can bliss be greater than that of coming down sun-scorched and footsore, to the divine cool streams which fall from hill to valley through a series of rock-pools, each a fit bath-place for an emperor, or to the lakes which tempt the swimmer below, or to the sea itself, never far distant from these mountains? To bathe after a stern day on the heights is the elysium of the climber; no ordinary mortals can understand the passion with which he betakes himself to the healing waters. ”

“ When we turn from the Glyders and Tryfan, still in their primitive state of utter wildness, to their great neighbour, Snowdon, scarred and maimed by copper-mine and steam-engine, the change is a striking one; it is like passing from a perfectly preserved work of art to some broken monument, the torso of a giant form, in which we have to reconstruct from the beauty of what remains, the once exceeding splendour of the whole. ”

“ There is a reckless joy, too, in the descent on a wet and stormy afternoon, when, after facing rain and wind for hours on the ridges, we return home drenched and weather-beaten, with the exhilaration that arises in the mind which has nothing to hope or to fear. Indeed, the foul day has its proper place, no less than the fair day, in the economy of the hills, when the rain-curtain is drawn visibly across the valley, and scores of white runnels are coursing down the slopes, and the voice of the swollen [Pg 81] river sounds hoarser every hour, while it rises as only a mountain river can rise. ”

“ But I would point out that there is another and still more important function of great mountains—the culture not of the athletic faculty alone, but of that intellectual sympathy with untamed and primitive Nature which our civilization threatens to destroy. A mountain is something more than a thing to climb. To the many who, on a fine summer day, swarm up Skiddaw or Snowdon by the well-worn pony-paths, it is pure holiday-making: to the few who (in another sense) swarm up Scafell Pinnacle or the Napes Needle, it is pure gymnastics ”

“ I have ventured to speak of mountain climbing in a similar relation, and to suggest that, in certain aspects, it is indeed a form of ecstasy, a standing above, and out of, oneself. The mind, no less than the body, has its Snowdons and its Helvellyns—its Crib Gochs and its Striding Edges—and when we climb them we may rise superior, not only to the visible landscape but to ourselves, and survey from a new vantage-point the low-lying flats and pastures, or shall we say the tablelands (too often literally so) , of our own tastes and habits. ”

“ There are moments when, as we stand in the presence of a great mountain group, we are almost overwhelmingly conscious of the brooding watchfulness, the sphinx-like reserve and expectancy, with which these silent sentinels confront us. What is the source of the strong yet mysterious attraction that draws us again and again to these wildernesses of rock and cloud, this “builded desolation” which might seem so antagonistic to human sympathies? ”

“ As we start up the valley, perhaps, the “white horses” of last night’s rain-storms are still racing down the slopes, and our staircase of mingled grass and rock bears the shadow of the dense cloud overhead—a scene of unrelieved dreariness to those who are unaware of what glories it may be the gateway. Toiling upwards, we reach the swirling fringe of vapour, which closes gradually round us and wraps from us all view of the familiar landscape below. Still on and up we press, till, as we set foot on the higher ridges, the magic of cloud-land begins ”

“ Let me not be misunderstood as wishing to depreciate in any way the craft of the climber, which, even apart from its great scientific and geographical value in the pioneering of Alps, Andes or Himalayas, and regarded merely as an athletic exercise, is one of the finest of sports; for which reason those who have long been familiar with the mountain life, though themselves not rock-climbers, will be the first to admire, and to envy, the marvellous [Pg 18] skill which has carried men into places where, a quarter-century back, no one dreamed of venturing. ”

“ The charm that binds us is as inexplicable as it is real. If human love is “of the valley” and calls us down, there is another and wilder love that is of the mountain and calls us upward.
There are unfrequented ranges, such as the Eskdale side of Scafell, or the Aber side of Carnedd Llewelyn, where one may walk for twelve hours together without meeting a human being; indeed, the loneliness of the Welsh hills is now even greater than it used to be, since the “hafodtai,” or upland farmsteads, where the herdsmen camped out during the summer months, have been abandoned ”

“ Why, then, with this native wealth within our shores, must we all be carried oversea to climb Alps with guides, when without guides, and at far less cost of time and money, we may have the same mountain visions, and hear the same mountain voices at home? A few of us, at least, will refuse to bow the knee in this fetish-worship of “going abroad”; for the benefit of going abroad depends mainly on person, temper, and circumstance; and to some mountain lovers a lifelong intimacy with their own hills is more fruitful than any foreign excursions can be. ”

“ 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 occasionally happens, [Pg 73] when some high ridge is bathed in cloud on one side and in sun on the other, that a climber, standing on the edge of the gulf, will see a small circular rainbow projected on the mist, with his own head forming the centre of it—a rare and curious experience for the wayworn pilgrim, thus to find his image, like that of a saint, with a halo round his head, emblazoned on the mountain vapours! Who shall say that the modern pilgrim is not blessed, as his forerunners were, with celestial apparitions? ”

“ But even the loveliest day is seldom perfected without the ministry of cloud, for clouds are the Genii of the mountains, concealing much, but revealing more, by their presence, and bringing to view the manifold depths and distances that would otherwise be unobserved. You cannot learn the moods and character of a mountain until you have studied its attendant clouds. ”

“ In the joy felt by the experienced climber on arriving at his mountain-top the view, perhaps, plays but a subordinate part, though there is always a fascination in a very distant prospect across sea or plain, such as one may get in the early morning, or when the air is clear after a rain shower or a snow squall, as when, from Wales or Cumberland, as the case may be, one sees the Isle of Man resting like a dream on the water, with a pillow of fleecy [Pg 76] cloud around it. ”

“ To the shepherds, of course, mountain climbing was not a sport but a business, and it would not have occurred to them to climb higher than was necessary; but who can doubt that, in the course of their daily rounds, the summits as well as the sides of the hills must have become known to them?
And if the tourist thinks the native cold and unimpressionable, what does the man who has been born and bred on the hills think of the man who comes on purpose to scramble there? ”

“ Let us consider a few of these pleasures, just those cheap and simple ones which are in the reach of anybody who, without aspiring to be a skilled rock-climber or Alpinist, is drawn by his love for our English or Welsh hills to spend long days among their solitudes, and to cope with the difficulties, such as they are, of weather and season in planning and effecting his ascents—the choice of routes, the fording of streams, the avoidance of precipices, and the keeping of the right course in dense and blinding mists. ”

“ Here is a strange relic, in the mind of a great modern poet, of the medieval sense of antagonism between man and nature: we now think rather of these remote tarns as wells of life and healing, to be repaired to by the pilgrim who needs refreshment and comfort in the jostling conflict of mankind.
With the features which I have mentioned, the barren hillside is not likely to lose its attractiveness for nature-lovers. A wilderness it may be, but of a sort which brings to mind the rapt words of the poet—
Oh, wilderness were paradise enow. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Nor must it be supposed that there is any taint of moroseness or misanthropy in this mountain seclusion; the contrary, rather, is the case, and the human sympathies are perhaps all the stronger because they are not expressed but implied. Tender relationships need space to grow in, and the self-withdrawal which allows a fuller, because a freer view of them, does not lessen but rather fosters their tenderness, even as we may understand the hills themselves the better if we sometimes watch them from afar; and it is just this gift of space and freedom that we find in mountains as nowhere else. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”