Pentland Hills

“ Leaving out those in Dumfriesshire, Ayrshire, and Haddington, where there was originally a Welsh-speaking people, ‘we find,’ he says, ‘the Cymric form of the word in the Grampians,’ which is utter nonsense, ‘the Pentland Hills,’ which is a corruption of Petland Hills, as the Pentland Firth is of the Petland Firth, ‘the Pennguaul Hills,’ which have no existence, and ‘Pendrich in Perth,’ which is a corruption of Pittindriech. ”

“ The remainder of the county embracing the fertile low ground west of the city of Edinburgh and along the basin of the Esk is occupied by Carboniferous strata and various igneous rocks associated with that formation. The Pentland Hills, formed of older Palaeozoic deposits, appear as a prominent ridge, throwing off the Carboniferous beds to the north-west and south-east. ”

“ In the north-western part of this region they appear to have remained till a comparatively late period, extending from the Carron to the Pentland hills, and known by the name of the plain of Manau, or Manann, while the name of Pentland, corrupted from Petland, or Pictland, has preserved a record of their occupation. ”

“ There is no hill in England like Pendle Hill."
"Every man to his taste, squire," observed Potts; "but to my mind, Pendle Hill has no other recommendation than its size. I think it a great, brown, ugly, lumpy mass, without beauty of form or any striking character. I hate your bleak Lancashire hills, with heathy ranges on the top, fit only for the sustenance of a few poor half-starved sheep ”

“ DESCRIBES THE DALE COUNTRY AS A WHOLE When in the early years of life one learns for the first time the name of that range of mountains forming the backbone of England, the youthful scholar looks forward to seeing in later years the prolonged series of lofty hills known as the ‘Pennine Range.’ His imagination pictures Pen-y-ghent and Ingleborough as great peaks, seldom free from a mantle of clouds, for are they not called ‘mountains of the Pennine Range,’ and do they not appear in almost as large type in the school geography as Snowdon and Ben Nevis? ”

“ THE LAND'S END DISTRICT—ST. BURYAN—SENNEN—LAND'S END—THE LONGSHIPS LIGHTHOUSE.
Most strangers obtain their first sight of Land's End at the conclusion of a direct walk or drive from Penzance. It is generally the first place the stranger desires to see, and he makes directly for it along the high road that runs inland.
The Land's End district, stretching westward from Penzance, forms the hundred of Penwith, a Celtic word meaning the "great, or chief, headland" ”

“ Never had manufacturing town a finer “lung” than is furnished by Pendle Hill, which offers a climb of 1,800 feet above sea-level to the dwellers in a district which is in touch also (near or far) with Sawley Ruins, Blackstone Edge, and the Vale of Craven. Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, was so carried away with delight in his travels thereabouts that he declares he was moved by the Lord to go up to the top of Pendle Hill, and in the clear atmosphere saw the sea shining beyond the Lancashire coast. ”

“ They really deserve the contempt of mankind and the curses of their children.—The woody hill mentioned before, winds away to the left, and carries the eye on to the Forest of Dean, from which it is divided by a narrow and very deep valley. Away to the right of Penyard Hill lies, in the bottom, at two miles distance, and on the bank of the river Wye, the town of Ross, over which we look down the vale to Monmouth and see the Welsh hills beyond it. ”

“ People sometimes write as if these mountains were “discovered,” and first ascended, by English travellers, and as if the native dalesmen had known nothing of their own country before. Such statements can hardly be taken with seriousness, for it is evident that, as sheep [Pg 15] were pastured on these hills from the earliest times, the shepherd must have long preceded the tourist as mountaineer. Thus we find Pennant, in his description of the “stupendous” ridges that surround Nant Ffrancon, remarking: “I have, from the depth beneath, seen the shepherds skipping from peak to peak ”

“ The cliffs here rise to their grandest in the magnificent piles of granite blocks towering up at the crested promontory of Tol-Pedn-Penwith, the "Holed Headland in Penwith." The cliff-top walk has here broadened out to an expanse of short moss-like grass interspersed with rabbit-burrows, knobs of lichened rock and tufts of thrift or sea-pink. It is good going for the pedestrian, but the grass is apt to be slippery. ”

“ Seldom checking her speed, she hurtled along the ribbon of trail. Racing on to the sharp turn, she shifted her weight and swung her body at precisely the right instant. The slope stretched on past rows of tall trees, towering like sentinels along the snow-swept ridges. Presently it flattened out into an open valley. Penny sailed past a house, a barn, and gradually slowed up until she came to a low hillock overlooking the village.
Recapturing her breath, Penny took off her skis and walked on into Pine Top. ”

“ It stands on the brow of a hill which bounds one side of the wealthy and picturesque valley that winds along from Huddersfield to Penistone. It boasts one main street, which sidles along down the hill-side with here and there a clever curve, just enough to prevent you from taking a full-length view of the street; on and down it goes, the houses on the one side looking down on those opposite, and evidently having the advantages of being higher up in the world than their neighbours, until it terminates in the highroad leading out of the village towards Honley and Penistone. ”

“ Good camp. Easy life. All knocked to hell along of a girl's whim. Mebbe that's the way my medi cine is working to git me back over the ridge. Knew something was going to bu'st when I picked up that Tunkan rock at Illinoistown.”
And he hummed the Teton Sioux medicine song, “The Sacred Stones Come to See You,” and felt a surge of impatience to be east of the Sierra and working his way through the Humboldt Mountains to rediscover old scenes visited in his youth when he was one of General Ashley's men.
It was evening when the mountain man entered Nevada City and began his search for old Miguel. ”

“ She gave him no answer, and for several miles they pressed forward without speaking, the path very dark under the forest crown, the moon lighting the openings. At last she halted, and he asked how far they must travel before overtaking the Indians.
“They will make their camp in the first hills of the mountains, about twenty miles from where you and Joseph Brant found me. We have come a fourth of the way. They are traveling much slower than we. They will have scouts out over their back trail. We must not follow too close. ”

“ Colonel Pendleton looked at the sturdy mountain lad, his compact figure, square shoulders, well-set head with its shock of hair and bold, steady eyes, and at the slim, wild little creature shrinking against the mantel-piece, and then he turned to his own son Gray and his little cousin Marjorie. Four better types of the Blue-grass and of the mountains it would be hard to find. ”

“ Every one who has gone by train to Bolton or Bury, will remember this beautiful valley, sometimes called the Agecroft, sometimes after its river, the Irwell. On the left, as soon as Pendleton is passed, the high grounds of Pendlebury come into view, their brows covered with trees. On the right, first we have broad, sweet lawns of meadow and pasture, and in autumn yellow corn–fields; and, beyond these, rising in terraced slopes, with deep bays and rounded promontories, according as the hill recedes or swells, the woods overlooking Agecroft Park, presently succeeded by those of Prestwich. ”

“ Bending double, the mountain man made for the north side of the valley and found it dark night inside the timber. His unerring sense of location permitted him to penetrate the growth in a straight line to the opening; and, passing around to the west, he took up his position in the spot from which he had spied on Martin two hours before.
His ears rather than his eyes told him when the outlaw leader entered the opening. There came the sound of steel grating on stones and the softer sound of dirt being thrown aside. ”

“ I sniffed and detected smoke, a thin reek of burning grass. I wet my finger and tested the faint breeze. It still held from the south. Creeping to the edge of the plain I could make out moving shapes as the Indians rode up and down the front of the timber. But there were no fires burning on this side, and a blaze lighted on the north would sweep away from us.
Returning to Miss Dearness, I reassured her.
"Then there is only one other explanation," she said. "Flat Mouth has set the grass afire on the north side of us,"
"It will burn to the Turtle, perhaps to the Park." ”

“ Keeping to the hillside, Penny reached a high point of land overlooking what had been the town of Delta. Two or three streets remained as before. One of the few business places still standing was the big white stone building that housed the local telephone company. Elsewhere there was only water and scattered debris.
Penny headed up the valley, passing and meeting groups of bedraggled refugees who had taken to the hills at the first alarm. She questioned everyone. Nevertheless, definite information eluded her. How many lives had been lost? How great was the property damage? ”

“ But, having learned that a search was going on in his neighbourhood, the young "Laird of Pentland Tower" had assumed a new disguise, and betaken himself to another locality, from which he was drawn by the blessed change of government already alluded to, as well as by his wish to dignify and adorn, with the name and the honour of wife, "a bonny, virtuous, kind-hearted lassie," who long continued to share and add to his happiness, and to secure the inheritance of Pentland Tower, with its domains, to the name of "Lindsay." ”

“ In popular parlance the country is “hilly.” It is uneven, not because there are high hills, but rather because there are deep valleys. If in imagination we fill up these valleys and the wide Triassic lowland to the general level of the broad inter-stream surfaces, we shall have constructed a gently undulating plateau, dipping to the south and east—a peneplain.36
Origin of the peneplain. This is not a constructional surface, for the rocks are greatly tilted, folded and faulted, so that the surface consequent upon such disturbance must have been complex and mountainous. ”

“ The wind, sweeping up the slope of Penetier, carried a strong, pungent odor of burning pitch. It brought also a low roar, not like the wind in the trees or rapid-rushing water. It might have been my imagination, but I fancied it was like the sound of flames blowing through the wood of a campfire.
“Fire! Fire!” exclaimed Hiram, with another ominous shake of his head. “We must be up an' doin'.”
“The forest's greatest foe! Old Penetier is doomed!” cried Dick Leslie. “That line of fire is miles long, and is spreading fast. It'll shoot up the canyons and crisscross the forest in no time. ”

“ Mount Pennell is nearly as smooth as Mount Ellen. Mount Ellsworth is nearly as rugged as Mount Holmes. One may ride to the crest of Mount Ellen and to the summit of Mount Pennell; he may lead his sure-footed cayuse to the top of Mount Hillers; but Mounts Ellsworth and Holmes are not to be scaled by horses. The mountaineer must climb to reach their summits, and for part of the way use hands as well as feet.
In a word, the ruggedness of the summits or the differentiation of hard and soft by sculpture, is proportioned inversely to the altitude. ”

“ The main road running south to Rose Head from Rosemarket cuts the peninsula into two unequal portions, the eastern and by far the larger of which consists of a flat tableland two or three hundred feet above the sea covered with a bushy heath, which flourishes in the magnesian soil and which when in bloom is of such a clear rosy pink, with nothing to break the level monochrome except scattered drifts of cotton grass, pools of silver water and a few stunted pines, that ignorant observers have often supposed that the colour gave its name to the whole peninsula. ”

“ The third Pentland had been the greatest evangelist of his time, a man who went through New England holding high the torch, exhorting rude village audiences by the coarsest of language to such a pitch of excitement that old women died of apoplexy and young women gave birth to premature children. ”

“ But no new people have come to the village except a white man, a brave Pillager Chippewa and a mighty medicine woman."
"By heavens! They build the hut for us. They expect us to stay here!" I cried in English.
My emotion gave him his cue, rather than any knowledge of English, although he was able to pick up words here and there.
"They let men sleep in the big hut or where they will," he said. "A new hut means a new wife for a big chief. I have said it. Let the white woman use her medicine now if she would go back to the Red River." ”

“ Looking to the south we have a perfect tableland of small mountains, the Leadhills range being a{23} little to the east, those near Sanquhar due south, and those near Dalmellington to the west, Blackcraig and Enoch’s Hill being prominent between. Behind a small cairn to the west of the two greater ones there is a very fine spring, the waters of which, falling into the valley below, divide into two little streams. The one part, under the name of the Garpel, runs into the Firth of Clyde at Ayr, through the channel of the water of Ayr ”

“ My refusal threw the chief into a paroxysm of rage, yet he restrained himself and said:
"Go to all the Minnetaree huts! Go to all the Mandan huts on the Missouri! Take what you will—all the ponies you will. If any Mandan tries to stop you, tell him I sent you!"
"My medicine tells me it is not robes and kettles and ponies I want," I replied. "I can get kettles among the white people. I can get better ponies and robes among the Cheyennes." ”

“ Nowhere in the surrounding landscape was there a sign of human habitation, neither on the road down from Pendhu nor on the road up toward Lanyon, not on the bare towans sweeping from the beach to the sky in undulating waves of sandy grass, nor in the valley between the towans and Pendhu, a wide green valley watered by a small stream that flowed into the cove, where it formed a miniature estuary, the configuration of whose effluence changed with every tide. ”