her life, for you could do nothing with them at all by ordinary
and recognised methods !
But this small group of stalwart Borrowdale yeomen have
sent out many successful men into the world, even if those
who remained at home are somewhat conspicuous for their
toryism. The managership of a mine, for instance, is the
last situation in which you would look for continuous heredity,
but in Borrowdale even this phenomenon might have been found;
for in the famous black-lead mine at Seatoller I am told that the
Dixon family had at no distant date held that position from father
to son for 150 years ! This lead, I may remark, is reputed the
finest in the world for pencils, and tradition says that it was
beneath the roots of a great ash torn up by the wind it was
first discovered. The mine .was first worked in Elizabeth's
reign, and by the end of the eighteenth century had grown so
valuable that a special Act of Parliament was passed to make
the picking of wad from the dump-heaps a felony ; for Jews
were in the habit of coming to Keswick for the special
purpose of dealing with these pilferers. The mineral was all
carried direct to London in a six-horse waggon guarded by an
armed escort and sold monthly at the company's warehouse.
A building too was erected over the entrance of the mine in
which guards slept at night with firearms beside them.
Even this sequestered spot was not free in the Civil W ar from
the tramp of armed men. Sir Edward Radcliffe, of Derwent-
water, was up for the King, and Borrowdale contributed its
quota to his troop. Sir Wilfred Lawson of Isell headed the
Parliamentarians, who stored their munitions of war on St.
Herbert's Island, destroyed the Radcliffe mansion on Lord's
Island, and among other exploits, rode up Borrowdale and
over Stake Pass to Rydal, where they sacked Rydal Hall, even
tearing u]) the floors in seach of treasure.
It is only fitting that the cuckoo should call merrily from
K
I30
ROSSTHWAITE
CHAP.
more than one hill-side as we enter the ancient hamlet of
Rossthwaite, for a legend runs that the dalesmen of old were
so simple as to believe that the spring would last for ever if
only they could keep its winged minstrel in their valley, and
with this in view they actually commenced to build a wall at the
mouth of Borrowdale, whose remains I have no doubt could
be produced if sufficiently insisted upon. We must not, however,
linger at Rossthwaite, with its old-fashioned nooks of ancient
cottage masonry and grey moss-grown roofs, its barking collies
Honister Pass.
and soft, swishing sound of travelling sheep ; though the snug
hotel beyond, set in a charming garden above the Longstrath-
beck may well tempt us to do so. Rossthwaite is an admirable
centre for hill walking and climbing. The Stake and Sty-head
passes are handy to it. The Scafell and Great Gable group of
mountains can be readily ascended and can be seen as we
continue our road. Glaramara towers close at hand : Thirlemere,
Grasmere and Dungeon Ghill may all be reached by mountain
routes that give the moderate walker a long day of such scenes
V OVER HONISTER 131
and such air and altitude as he would wish for. But we, who
in this narrative, at any rate, have to stick for the most part to
the road, are bound for the Honister pass and have yet, near a
thousand feet to climb before we are over it. And Seatoller here
may be accounted the foot of the actual ascent ; a cluster of old
buildings whose remarkable grouping against an overhanging
background of tall trees, illumined by the flashing of a moun-
tain torrent, is one of the best bits of the kind in the Lake
Country.
Once through the wood above Seatoller, our way, enlivened
by the almost continous cataracts of Horse Gill, emerges upon
the wild fell and a road that is rarely rideable winds up the
deep mountain hollow to the summit of the pass. It is not
well that rain should fall while making this ascent, for there is
nothing bigger than a bunch of rushes in the way of shelter •
but it is well perhaps that it should have lately fallen and filled
the fountains of the hills and stirred into activity the slender
cataracts that hang like silver ribbons against the grey face
of the mountain, upon our right and left. You will often turn
in the toilsome climb to get breath and at the same time to
look back over Seatoller and Rossthwaite to the Armboth fells,
and the fine mass of Helvellyn towering in the background.
But the wildness that of right belongs to the top of the pass is
somewhat qualified by the sheds connected wath the quarry
which has riven the savage face of Honister Crag into shapes
that in gloomy weather rather add perhaps than detract from its
natural grandeur.
As we begin a descent so steep as to make the journey from
the other side almost impossible for vehicles, one of the most
striking scenes in the Lake country bursts into full view.
For Honister Crag, a rugged and gloomy mass of precipice and
screes, fills the whole foreground to the left, soaring up to a
height of near 2,000 feet. Between this and the opposing
shoulders of Dale Head we may look down through the nar-
row vista to the Buttermere road, trailing along a wild valley
K 2
132 BUTTERMERE chap.
far beneath us. The descent with a cycle is tiresome in the
extreme, while it causes timid females on the top of a coach to
grip each other in spasmodic fashion and wish themselves well
home again. But the steeper the grade, the quicker, after all,
one is down, and we may sail away over an unfenced moor-
land road, with a beck roaring and growing beside us for
"a couple of miles, till Buttermere spreads its shining surface
across the narrow valley and another mile or so of easy road
through the charming woodlands that fringe its banks lands
us at the hamlet itself.
This last consists of a fiirmhouse or two and numerous
outbuildings, a diminutive church, though larger than its pre-
decessor, a parsonage and three inns, two of which are com-
paratively modern, while the third, appropriately called the
Fish, is quite a venerable tavern and of some note in early
Lakeland travel. These buildings cluster chiefly upon the neck
of land which divides the head of Crummock from the foot of
Buttermere, amid a pleasant network of meadow and pasture
through which the little river connecting the two lakes prattles
merrily. It is a quite ideal spot, and gives a greater sense of
seclusion from the world than any haunt of tourists we have
yet been in. There is, of course, no escaping from the fact that a
certain number of vehicles, every single week-day during the
summer, make the twenty-four mile round from Keswick, coming,
as we have done, by Honister and returning over Buttermere
Hause and the Vale of Newlands, undoubtedly one of the finest
and probably the heaviest coach drive in England. But except
for the midday hours, largely occupied by visitors in feeding,
and I daresay for the August holidays, Buttermere is a marvel-
lously quiet spot considering its fame. I have myself been, in
May, the only visitor at the three inns, which is equivalent to
saying in all Buttermere, and again, in mid-June, but one of a
small company of cheerful but unsuccessful fishermen.
Now Buttermere and Crummock lakes, together with the strip
of land that parts them, completely fill a narrow, trough-like
ITS MOUNTAIN WALLS
133
valley of something like five miles in length, and not often over
half a mile in width. On the hither side only, where runs
the road, a narrow fringe of fenced enclosures and belts of
woodland straggle a short space up the mountain foot or hang
above the lake. Upon the further or the western side, for
nearly the whole distance of both lakes, the mountains, in
various shapes and clad with varied natural growths, fall almost
abruptly to the water's edge. Above Buttermere particularly is
this the case, High Crag, High Stile and Red Pike all 2,500
Cnivnnock Lake.
feet or thereabouts, forming a stupendous wall of green, not
very rugged such as can be seen of it, but none the less imposmg
from the very vastness of the natural curtain that catches the
sun so early on its downward course. The fine effect of
this silent, overhanging steep, too, is greatly heightened by the
cataract of Sour Milk (lill which for hundreds of feet falls like a
thread of shimmering light, with sound unheard, but in-
stinct with life and movement. Tt is immediately opposite the
village, leaping suddenly into sight from the rim of a lofty
134
RED PIKE
CHAP.
ledge, and you would almost guess from the look of the hollow
between the summits of High Stile and Red Pike that the
stream issued from a tarn within their shadow, as is, in fact, the
case, its source being in a lonely shallow lakelet full of ill-fed
trout, and but a few hundred feet from the summit of the range.
No sojourner at Buttermere should by any means, if favoured
with good weather, neglect to ascend Red Pike, since the climb,
though steep, can be quickly made, as it springs sharply from
the lake shore and pauses nowhere.
Looking up Buttermere.
Buttermere too, like the other lakes we have seen, has its
own characteristic charms. A single country house, buried in
luxuriant and long planted woodland on the eastern shore, is
almost the only touch of outside humanity about it. It is wild
and natural without being savage like Wastwater. In still weather
the marvellous purity of its waters, the clean silvery nature of
its strand and bt)ttom in the shallow bays ; the dry, white
shingle of its shores contrasting with the bright verdure, not only
of bordering strips of meadow but of the reflected mountains,
V WEATHER EFFECTS 135
give Buttermcrc, to my thinking, at any rate, a cliaracter all
its own. Yet I am not sure if a quiet dull day after a stormy
season, when the immense green walls between which the narrow
lake sleeps are all spouting with white waters hurrying down-
wards in strange contrast to the motionless and glassy surface,
is not as good a moment as any for loitering by its shores.
Honister Crag, so prominent an object, is, beyond a doubt, best
suited to a gloomy sky. The rocky heights above the lake-
head known as the " Haystacks " match well, too, with a sombre
background. When I recall, however, the look of the valley
as it appeared to me one sunny morning in June last from the
lower ledges of Red Pike a thousand feet above it ; the brilliant
blue of the lake ribbed by the light breeze and catching the
shadows of the passing clouds, the green woods of Hassness
blowing along the further shore, the bold heights of Robin-
son and Buttermere Moss, of Whiteless Pike and Grassmoor,
shifting their moods every moment with the changing sky ;
when I recall the infinite beauty of that scene, and in the midst
of it the peaceful cluster of old buildings, embowered in foliage
with its carpet of green meadows spread around it from lake to
lake, I am inclined to repent and think the mood that would
favour the gloomy sky is the least happy one, and that the
most complete and enduring enjoyment is after all to be found
in the other, and the sunnier aspect. Yet I am sorry, too, for
the lover of nature, if there be any such, who is insensible to
the influence of her more sombre or more savage moods.
Nowhere is one more forcibly reminded than at Buttermere,
particularly when one wants to get out of it, of the " starfish "
nature of the Lake Country formation, and of how much road
travelling in proportion to the actual area has to be accom-
plished before every main valley has been exploited on wheels
of any kind. Ennerdale for instance, lies just over the high
ridge before us, an hour's walk perhaps for an active youth,
but to get round tliere by road means a circuit of a dozen or
fifteen miles. W'astdale, further on again, can be easily
I3& A MOUNTAIN WALK chap.
reached on foot in three hours by mountain paths, but to get
there on wheels means a circuit of half Cumberland. I shall
venture, therefore, by way of variety, to take a day in the
mountains, and gossip for a few pages along the steep track
which leads from the head of Buttermere over Scarf Gap into
Ennerdale and thence over Blacksail to Wastwater, wildest
of lakes. This is a matter of some four hours each way taking
things very easily, which in a long summer day leaves ample time
for rest and refreshment at the inn at Wastdale Head, and even
for deviations from the track should such seem tempting. This,
indeed, is one of the most striking walks in the Lake region, and
though from start to finish traversing a perfect solitude, need
have no terrors for any but the hopelessly short-winded.
You may save two miles, moreover, at the beginning and end
of the day by riding up the shore of Buttermere and leaving
your machine at Gatesgarth beneath the shelter of Mr. Nelson's
roomy waggon sheds.
The homestead and enclosures of this farm, somewhat
famous in Herdwick genealogy, fill what is left of the narrow
valley beyond the head of Buttermere. A typical mountain
sheep farm it is too, reaching out upon every side to the limit of
vision, or, in other words, to the rugged crests of High Stile and
the Haystacks, of Heetwith Pike, Dalehead and Robinson
which form a horse-shoe round it. Many a prize ram and
ewe has been bred upon these fells, and such sprinkling as you
may see of the three thousand and odd sheep now carried on
the run will no doubt possess some measure of the blood of
a long line of cup-winners. Plantations of beech and oak and
larch, screen the homestead from the north-west winds that are
said to rage up the narrow lakes in winter with tremendous
fury. A beck courses through the yards beside the grey
farm buildings of unmortarcd stone with cheerful and harmless
prattle under a June sun ; but as the present occupant once
observed to me, if the builders of these old homesteads had
only realised what a tyrant a beck could at times become,
V A MOUNTAIN SIIEKP FARM 137
they would, c\en at the sacrifice of some convenience, have
gone a little further from their banks and a little higher up ilie
hills. Through the flat of fenced enclosures that forms the
floor of the narrow valley, the infant Cocker and the ^\â– arnscliffe
beck hurry to the lake amid unmistakable traces upon either
bank of their propensity to misbehave. An oat-field or two,
some meadows promising a late hay crop, some fresh sown
lurnips just entering on their struggle with the fly, a few milk
cows and some playful colts comprise the home industries. But
the imjjortant part of Gatesgarth's live stock are away now on
the Fells, some of them you can see flecking the velvety slopes
of Fleetwith, others are cropping the short turf of Hindscarth,
some are lying in the shadow of rocks and boulders beneath
High Crag. An inevitable few again will be huddling in remote
nooks and crannies under the torture of the relentless maggot,
while the small force of the farm men and dogs with shears
and salve pots are probably at this moment hunting for the
patients over the ten or fifteen square miles of their wild and
rugged holding.
When you have climbed under a hot sun, and by a rough
path, to the high shoulder of Scarf Gap, you will have stopped
many times to look back, over the glassy stretch of Butter-
mere, lying so beauteously in the bosom of the hills ; but you
will have been glad also to take breath and perhaps even to
mop your face. And when the thousand or so feet are accom-
plished it may perchance be borne in upon you that this is but
a little fraction of the hill farmer's daily task in busy seasons,
in winter snow or summer sunshine, in rain or storm, in youth
or age. And when you have reminded yourself that the com-
pensating picturesqueness and romance of the business is the
creature of your imagination and has little part in his, the
thought may possibly occiu- whether with wool at 8^/. and fat
wethers, at such late season as mountain shee]) are ready, at
thirty shillings the hill -farmLr's life is all that poets and summer
tourists paint it.
138 A CURIOUS USAGE chap.
The Gatesgarth fells are no longer "stinted pasture" or
common land. The landlord, here again a Marshall, has
fenced the boundary, a not uncommon proceeding nowadays
and of infinite convenience to the farmer. For though the
mountain sheep on commons like the Helvellyn and Matter-
dale ranges acquire an hereditary instinct for keeping to
their own beats that is wholly marvellous, a certain amount
of straying is inevitable. This very custom of a common
grazing ground, to which each valley-farm has a recognised but
unrecorded right to send up so many sheep, has maintained,
and indeed necessitated, a usage that is quite unique in
England — namely, that of the flock being the landlord's
property ; a fixture, in fact, of the farm, and calculated in the
rent paid, if not, indeed, the principal factor. The origin
of this is that only sheep bred upon the mountain know the
range. A strange flock would give such trouble for so long a time
that an incoming tenant would be almost compelled to purchase
of an outgoing one. Hence the sheep, by a natural process,
become part of a property that without them is useless. They
are valued to the tenant and periodically appraised, the differ-
ence at his death or outgoing being due from the one party
to the other. The farmer, therefore, under this system, is in
literal fact a shepherd working on the profit system with his
landlord, though the annual payment in the shape of rent is a
fixed one. Gatesgarth, though now fenced in, is held upon
these lines, the father of the present occupant having been
a noted breeder and prizewinner. So curious a custom will
interest, I think, any one connected with country life, and to
those of my readers who are not, I offer my sincere apologies
for the digression.
I will only add that these boundary fences, such as the one
we have now to go through on the ridge of Scarf Gap, with a
very necessary request posted on it to shut the gate behind
us, consist of iron posts let iiitcj the rock and connected by
strands of plain wire. They have sometimes to climb the summit
V DOWN INTO ENNERDALE 139
of the loftiest mountain, and to traverse the brink of the most
savage cHffs. And even with the efforts made to give them
stabihty, it is astonishing to see how in exposed spots at great
altitudes the wires have been torn away and crumpled up by the
winter gales, and lie about in tangled heaps among the rocks,
droning dismal airs to the touch of the summer breezes which
play among them. There is indeed little other sound up here
on the fells but the plash of the rill just broken from its boggy
spring which leads our path-way down into the head of
Ennerdale.
The greatest enthusiast on T^akeland will not deny the
remarkable absence of bird life among its mountains. We
sadly miss the cluck of the startled grouse, the wild whistle of
the curlew, the plaintive cries of the lapwing. There are no sky-
larks here even in the valleys, and the white-backed wheatear
with its chirruping note is the only bird whose company we may
safely count upon. The ring ousel, the crag starling as it is
here called, that shy haunter of high places, that lover
of lonely glens and silent uplands, sometimes gives us
a pleasant surprise as he dashes with startled cry from some
stunted rowan tree on whose future berries he has set his heart.
The stone-chat, for which one might fairly look, I have never to
my knowledge seen here. But turning for a moment from lesser
to greater things, eagles were common enough in Ennerdale, as
in Borrowdale, at the close of the eighteenth century, and the
destruction of nests was a regular spring function. The same
rope that was used in Borrowdale and kept there, says a local
writer, was passed on, when needed, to Ennerdale and Wast-
water, these three localities containing the most precipitous
cliffs in Lakeland.
Indeed we are already face to face with some of the most
notable ones. As a faint track through rocks and bog grasses
leads us down into Ennerdale, we see beneath us a wild trough-
like valley untouched by civilisation, and threaded by the
windings of a silver stream. At the head of it the Great
I40 THE PILLAR ROCK chap.
Gable closes the outlook, while away down to the right the
waters of Ennerdale Lake gleam between the thrusting shoulders
of the hills. But immediately in front, forming, in fact, the
opposite wall of the valley, is the pile of screes and crags and
precipices which prop the long back of the Pillar Mountain.
Though the brilliant sunshine seems to flood everything else, it
wholly misses at this hour the savage northern face of the
Pillar which lies wrapt in deep shadows that are all the
gloomier and the more sombre from the contrast. Though much
less than a mile away, the details are so effectually shrouded as
to give the whole face of the mountain the appearance of a
vast and gloomy precipice. The outline of the famous Pillar
Rock, though right in front of us, is literally undistinguishable
against the shadowy background, while wandering rays of sun-
shine that here and there succeed in kissing some outstanding
crag add further mystery to the contrasting gloom.
The Pillar Rock enjoys much reputation among cragsmen,
for by a false step you may achieve an unbroken fall of something
like seven hundred feet. There are numerous routes, too, up
the face of it, involving various degrees of peril, as one may
well believe from its appearance. Young men of more
ambition than experience have been compelled ere now to
spend the night on the summit from their inability, or want
of nerve, to face the descent. The sad story of the elderly
clergyman who twenty years ago was found dead near its foot
on the morrow of his seventieth birthday is no legend but a
comparatively recent fact. The old gentleman, a Dalesman
bred, I think, lived at St. Bees and used to come once a year
on his birthday, to climb the Pillar. On this last occasion the
physical strain is supposed to have proved too much for him ;
for on being missed and searched for, he was found l}ing
dead underneath the cliff, not from a fall, as is sometimes
related, but from exhaustion or lieart-failure after achieving the
descent in safety.
Now no one can have been in Keswick, Ambleside, or any
V A WOULD-BE CRAGSIMAN 141
of the Lake towns without admiring the great number of really
beautiful photographs upon a large scale of the surrounding
scenery. Among these the most difficult, or at least the most
notable, crags which the serious climbers affect are always
prominent, the Pillar and the Needle Rock, which is near
the Great Gable, being the most familiar in shop windows.
The latter, as usually i)hotographed, with figures clinging
to the side or perched on the narrow summit, has a truly awe-
some appearance and is calculated to make one's very blood run
cold. A young townsman who is an expert and somewhat of a
leader in this crag climbing business told me an amusing
incident bearing upon it. It so happened that an American,
by no means in his first youth nor yet slim in the waist,
was fired with ambition to attempt some of the ascents he
had heard of in Ennerdale and about Wastdale head, and
applied to my informant to superintend his maiden efforts.
While a plan of operations was being discussed, the two walked
round one of the photographic studios, the Englishman
pointing out those particular views which bore in any way upon
the subject in hand. The stranger's zeal, his companion noticed,
grew unmistakably cooler as the inspection proceeded, and
when at length they stood before the Needle rock, which, I have
before remarked, is as usually depicted a really gruesome
looking thing not unlike a Cleopatra's needle with a crack or
two across it, the stout American remained mute for a long time,
apparently fascinated by the prospect before him. At length
he broke silence :
" What's that thing ? "
" The Needle Rock," replied the other.
" And who in thunder's that d — d fool on top of it ? "
" That's me," replied his proposed conductor.
" Christopher Columbus ! " according to my informant, was
all the American said, but a world of meaning may be thrown
by an American into the mere name of the discoverer of his
country, when fervently invoked.
142 T' GIRT DOG OF ENNERDALE chap.
The matter, it is needless to add, went no further.
We have to follow up the lonely valley for quite a distance,
before a deserted cabin, the only sign of man, within it marks
the spot where an almost invisible track up a craggy ravine