William T. Palmer

“ Persons unaccustomed to night on the water assert that the silence is almost appalling: save for the ripples against the timbers there is no sound. To me, however, there is pleasure in that far-off whistle of an otter; in the churrs and twitters, hoots and shrieks, of night birds. There is a romance in gloom of which garish day knows nothing. The fairy world visits you again, and you witness gay revels in the starlight.
The lake to the angler, the hillside and the meadows to the wanderer, are the charms of the vale. ”

“ The air is chill, but our blood is too warm for us to be more than barely conscious of it. From a corner of the track we have an excellent view backward. The lake is still hidden in its curtain of mist, the dark woods of Brantwood side climb sharply into the white desolations. Coniston Old Man over the way—how truly near it looks!—is gilded by a new light; the moon is rising and the light spreads over summit and upper snowfield, over crag and bield and lower slack of white, finally touching with crystal the fields and houses in the deep dingles around. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Far off is Loughrigg fell with larch woods clustering up its sides, and the lake of Grasmere so dull with green reflections that a quick eye is necessary to distinguish it from its surroundings. Rising from your side is Seat Sandal, a host of carrion crows wheeling round its rugged knots; Steel Fell rises opposite, flecked with wandering sheep. The sky is bright blue, with soft white clouds lazily drawing their way across the narrow gulf. In wide patches the sunshine seems to drift about the landscape, picking out a green benk here, throwing a shadow over the crags there into some deep ravine. ”

“ Lofty Mellbreak sheering from the water’s edge, Grassmoor and many another craggy giant sweeping up to invisible heights above us, the golden green of new bracken, the purple bloom of heather, here and there an emerald patch of larches. To me there is infinite change in a view over a wide lake. Those huge, irregular phantoms are the shadows of a cloud above: they sweep across the lake, then dull the mountainside; drop away into some deep glen, pass on to dim far-away summits ere they slide over the horizon. The emotions of the heavens are reflected in God’s mirror beneath. ”

“ To the right Helvellyn is now in fuller sight, furrowed with watercourses, jagged with scaurs, with the sunshine dancing on the brackens and warming up the sober green stretches of grass. The dale is desolate and barren, yet a portion is known as the City, in memory possibly of a settlement of Britons in its stony waste.
The great gap of Wythburn Head will afford a pleasant ramble to any one who has the time. There is no towering crag, no huge cataract, no narrow, yawning ravine, but an infinite variety of the sweetest brook scenery. ”

“ After heavy rain the old poet’s description can be tested—at the expense of a wetting. Down a wide stair from the moorland, bristling with crags and boulders and outstanding seams, come the waters—their frolic can often be heard at Keswick, though Greta is charging, headlong, noisily down its rugged course. The moment you enter the gully—should you desire to see the heart of its beauty—you are swathed in spray; never in flood-time can you see more than a few yards ahead; your eyes film with moisture; the air to your lungs is choky with mist; the day is gloomed with spindrift. ”

“ The road now turns down the pass, a long, swinging slope where the steadying brake is necessary. To northward show the storm-washed sides of Helvellyn, with new rents staring like fresh-turned loam in the sunshine. A blue peak of Skiddaw is holding, as though unwilling to part with, a fleecy cloud, and here sweep into sight Raven Crag with its precipitous front, and the laughing summits of Armboth, one by one. Our cycles are gaining speed; we reach a corner, the top of a steep pitch,—there before us is a sudden view of Thirlmere, with Saddleback rising in rugged majesty behind. ”

“ After a suitable rest the horses will draw the crowd away over Newlands Hause, where out of the green hillsides a road has been delved, to Keswick, and our dale and lake will forget disturbance till to-morrow. The eternal silence of a mountain-land will fall around and render rapturous evening and night and blithesome morning. To drive from Keswick to Buttermere and return is no mean item in a tourist’s day; it is a noble day’s work for horses, and only good ones can endure frequent journeys over these rugged passes. ”

“ Around a hundred peaks, ranging from noble Skiddaw to humble Swineside and Catbells, the shafts of light fall and ebb. Here in the rift between two summits is a stretch of purple, there a patch of rosy light fades on a scree-seamed brae. If the sun sets in a flurry of crimson cloud the spectators will hardly take their eyes from the lake: the reflections of the sky are so charming, so magnificent. No painter could match the evanescent changes, the kindlings of the sky, the soft portrayal of each living flame on the shimmering water, the green gloom of overhanging mountains. ”

“ The goats from Coniston fells wander in search of toothsome grass to beyond the Duddon, and there is record of an exciting hunt among the rocks of Wallabarrow for a wandering goat. In winter only do these animals approach civilisation; their usual haunts are the crags above sequestered glens. The snow crunches under our feet, and we speedily come down to where we again catch view of Coniston Water. Now it is clear of mist, the whitened fields, blotched with woods, limned with hedges, are in sharp contrast to the grey ice, and to the glittering unfrozen water in mid-lake. ”

“ It lies in a land of meadows, but lofty hillsides rise above its glen. No boats are kept for public use, but a visitor can usually arrange a loan with some farmer. Loweswater is not a lake to exhaust in one afternoon: the cunning ones lodge by the week at the clean, comfortable farms, enjoying the plain fare of rural Cumberland with a delight bred of open air and keen exercise. The rod is hardly ever from the waters, except for a siesta at midday—and not then if the day be overcast, with a warm breeze kissing the water and enticing broods of new insects from the depths. ”

“ Mellbreak! What a mighty mass! White are the wide fans of scree, but black and frowning the tiers of precipice. Above in a grand sweep comes the head of the mighty monarch, from which the sunshine is striking a thousand frost spangles. The sky is deep blue overhead. Hark to the croaking of the ravens; they seem to have found some carrion—perhaps a dead sheep—in yonder ghyll, and down they come, one, two, three, in all six, a crowd for these unsociable birds. Some of the ghylls are choked with snow, but others show black, rocky rents in the snowfields. ”

“ There is heather by the roadside now, its tufts perfect masses of bloom, and the broom’s yellow glory is not wanting. In half a mile we leave the desolation of rock and grass—here are trees and even a few pieces of hedges, rowan and hawthorn, with a few scrubby oaks. The level plain of Wastdale head appears in front; we coast round guardian Yewbarrow, pass cottage and farm as far as the road serves, then push our machines to the church of the dale. Now the weather changes. The brilliant sunshine suddenly glooms and dies away. ”

“ So much has been written of 86 the mountain-climbing around Wastwater that to infuse romance, to say any new thing, is difficult. Steep ghylls there are to ascend, loose bands of scree to pass, bogs varying in depth according to weather. Here a rushing rivulet to ford, there, winding beneath crazy rock fragments, the path hangs on the brink of a deep ravine; collar work up five hundred feet of slippery grass, and splendid poising exercise over beds of boulders. When winter holds sway and a white garb hides the bloom of meadows and hillsides, Wastwater is a very home of loneliness. ”

“ Not far away is the main road; we pass up the hillside beyond it. In the recess beneath Fleetwith we are conscious of a flood indeed. Much of the stony level is swamped; with difficulty the sheep have been brought from danger, and are flocked near the farmstead. The torrents rushing in at the head of the mere can be traced, first by white horses, then by dark, level-flowing currents, far down the lake. From this height we again feel that the great water is rocking in its cradle of mountains. The furrows of incoming rills give the peculiar idea of ever-changing level to the water. ”

“ The floor of this lake is leaking upwards as though the steam was escaping by a thousand cracks in the ceiling of the nether regions and being condensed into Buttermere. Why, man, the lake bottom’s that lively that the trout and the char, the big pike down to the tiny minnow, are all having a job to hold the water at all. I bet every minute they’re expecting a geyser that’ll blow the whole lot of ’em over Red Pike to Ennerdale.”
When an angler relapses into this mood he is hopeless to cheer, so we silently respect his sorrows. ”

“ To northward lush fields and verdant woodlands border the mere, with hillsides, soft green and swelling among the levels, but, opposite, sheer and bristling with crags they rise from the water, crowded in by the heathy moors. Then the town on a tousled plain between Derwent and Greta, and beyond, the hills giving place 152 to mountains, Blencathra and Helvellyn, shadows wavering in August’s blue sky. From this corner of Catbells you curve slowly down to Grange; the road is ever fair, but he is an ardent cyclist who prefers to ride all along this incline of beauty. ”

“ So long as open water remained it was easy enough to put the boat along; but in a tangle of stems, when every pull at the oars means fouling and pulling plants up by the roots, it is hard work. The water-lily, with its heart of bright gold and ivory petals lying just awash the clear peaty water, is a queen of flowers. Beyond a profusion of these, tall, straight grasses rise like a brake over the boat, brown flower tufts crowning the straight green stems, a background of meadow tinged white and red and blue with flowers, and a coppice wood glorious with fox-gloves and wild Canterbury bells. ”

“ For the road one walks is a dusty ribbon over a parched moor, the grouse cluck drowsily in the heather, the rabbits lop lazily into the furze—the larks alone sing briskly, for they have climbed to fuller life in the highest heavens, far from the slumbrous world around us; the mountains afar off swim in haze, their scarry sides uncertain seem, but down there is the fruitful valley of the lake, with dancing rills, fields of green corn, and its flowery meadows ready for the mower. ”

“ Shortly we descend into a narrow glen, then zigzag up the flank of the fell. After a hard pull (the day is hot; the distant hills are swinging in vapour) we come to easier angles. The road is delved out of the hillside, the home of bracken and creeping stagshorn, with, by rills almost silent with drought, trees of hawthorn, alder and rowan. Below us—over spears of larch, over chevaux-de-frise of oak and ash and birch, over green and bronze cupolas of sycamore and beech, is the vale of Derwent, from Lodore to the furthest Man of Skiddaw. ”

“ Few trees are in sight; round an abandoned farm is a lonely cluster of sycamores; gulls are screaming and paddling in what was once pasture-land. Bare and stern is the last back-glance ere our way curves into a passage cut through the rocks. Then, suddenly—is this a new land, a new Thirlmere? The transformation is sudden and complete. To northward, many a mile, stretches a narrow lake, basking in the afternoon sun. Dense coppice and green larches clothe the slopes rising from the water; there is no indication of farms, of humanity. ”

“ Half-molten snowdrifts, torrents roaring, cascading from unseen above to invisible below, gouts of water cleaving through the mistwreaths. But seldom does such a wanderer brave the elements long. Turgid torrents and close-enwrapping fogs charm no one. Indoors the fires burn bright; save for a brief space about noon, when a sickly lightening proclaims day’s climax and glory, the lamps are hardly out. To the gloom of the clouded sky is added the great shadows of close-hemming mountains; there are houses among the fells on which for three months of the year the sun never shines. ”

“ By the rivulet we see the usual patient angler. Men there are so entranced in seeking to lure the trout, that they brave rain or shine indifferently. Under the hazels, when booming gusts clash walls of rain against mountain and bosky meadow, they still angle on; under the hazels you find them when from a sky of staring blue the sun beats down on a drought-struck land. ”

“ Skimmed over with ice, except where busy rills keep open a few yards’ space, its levels steely hard, with a few skaters gliding among its islets, with brown coppice and white fields rising around, with the towering front of Nab Scar frowning at the softer slacks of Loughrigg, Rydal was a sight to remember. But its glory was all forgotten as I noticed the frost flowers in the roadside—are Nature’s largest or her smallest forms the loveliest? Is the spreading landscape as full of beauty as the flowers formed by frost rime round a casual sod in the wayside? ”

“ The work is arduous for both men and dogs, the exact equivalent of the work in miles and altitude ascended being often tremendous.
Our way, however, is smoother, easier than this. We skirt the grounds of Rydal Mount: from a higher bank we look over its round chimneys on to the green 40 glen below, on to Windermere, the river-lake, winding away between bluffs bronzed with fading foliage, to be lost at last in the heart of them; we look along the rocky edge of Loughrigg, where the dying bracken shows the approach of autumn. ”

“ As our boat slips away, the upper lake, a field of splendid blue, comes in sight. In mid-lake a tuft of rock claims attention—the boat glides to it over the faint ripples. It proves indeed to be a cluster of loose fragments, pushed up from the lake-floor to be a resting-place for the birds of land and water. So piled are the stones that it seems impossible human hands have not been busy in the midst of this waste of waters. ”