with them, nearly ninety years ago, and their name is written
large all over it in such a fashion as does it honour. What
extent of land their descendants may own on the various lakes I
know not ; but not only here on Ullswater but on Coniston and
Buttermere and Derwentwater you will find them the pervading
influence. The saplings that these earlier Marshalls planted
have long sprung up into noble woods of oak and ash, beech
and sycamore, that roar finely in wild weather above the
breaking waves, and in quiet sunny weather make a fringe of
twinkling foliage between lake and mountain that is wholly
charming.

Now I cannot think that the disguising of any British
mountain side with a covering of larch or pine wood is of any
advantage whatever other than a commercial one. It is con-
soling to find that so eminent a judge of nature as Wordsworth
held this view very strongly, denouncing in no measured
terms the wholesale planting of these stiff exotics, though
the larch, it is true, has the merit of being the first tree to feel
the touch of spring. Sprinkled here and there among forests of
deciduous trees, the Scotch fir gives an admirable touch of
colour. In isolated groups, upon crags or lonely hill tops, they
have a character of their own, and a weird charm that is
undeniable. In dull and level countries forests of pine are
serviceable to the landscape, especially in winter, are good to
walk in, while their music on a windy day is of a high order.
But both in America and on the Continent you may freely
gauge the measure of their monotony when covering the
surface of a hilly or a mountain country. It would be a
strange taste indeed that would prefer them to the varied detail
and matchless colouring that glows upon an English mountain
side, and above all upon a Cumbrian one. Indeed, that very



TI



HEATHER OR TURF?



51



scantiness of heather which every one remarks upon, and some
people without much discrimination deplore, is almost an
advantage. The sportsman of course has associations connected
with the mountain plant which make a just estimate of its
decorative value difficult, and many sportsmen only see it for
the few weeks of its bloom and beauty. Perhaps of the
mass of tourists the same may be said. But for many months
in the year it is surely the ugliest growth, regarded from a
distance, that a mountain produces ? We call it russet, and






^VTk'SRr'T'v







Broihers^vater and Kirkstone Pass.

speak of it in endearing fashion, unconscious that other
influences are working in the mind, or else that we are talking
something like nonsense. It seems ungracious and unnatural to
depreciate heather ; but as the Lakeland mountains are often
criticised for their scanty growth of it, it is only reasonable to
ask the reader to consider himself, in spring, summer, or winter,
standing opposite a mountain clothed with heather upon the one
hand, and on the other showing a varied surface of rock and
fern, of many coloured bog grasses, of bright sheep-nibbled
turf, and to honestly say if he would wish to exchange the

E 2



52 PATTERDALE chap.

bright and changing hues of the one for the sombre monotony
of the other. I think he would not.

Now Patterdale as a district, or " kingdom " which it formerly
was in the Mounsey period, runs some four miles up from the
head of Ullswater, wedged in between the mountains, till the
little lake of Brotherswater fills the narrowing vale and
marks the commencement of the steep climb over Kirk-
stone. A straggling village, in no way unsightly, which is
creditable under the circumstances, follows the highway for
half a mile or so, and a snug old-fashioned-looking hotel sug-
gests in its exterior the post-chaise period of Lake travel, though,
for aught I know, it may be fitted inside with electric light
and every " modern convenience." Meadows now laid up for
hay, for the most part cover the levels, and twisting through
their midst the silvery streams of the Goldrill shine in the
open sunlight, or twinkle through screens of willow and alder.
Farmhouses, in white or grey, nestle beneath either mountain
foot ; and though most of these, I fancy, lay themselves out for
rustic entertainment of summer visitors, there is little or no
sign of the private villa, which even in the Ambleside and
Grasmere district, to say nothing of Windermere, is somewhat
over pushful.

One can well imagine that Patterdale was a sufficiently
secluded spot in the year 1745, and that many of the people
in the low country around Penrith, at the first rumours of the
Pretender's army having crossed the Solway, sent their
valuables up there for security with much confidence, is not
surprising. It is curious, too, to read Wordsworth's encomiums
on the wonderful perfection which the art of news transmit-
ting had achieved in his time, as compared with a period then
comparatively recent. These particular remarks were occa-
sioned by his receiving the news of Trafalgar and Nelson's
death on November loth while breakfasting in Patterdale, and
this, it may be noted, was exactly three weeks after the battle !
During the past year, it is hardly necessary to say, one



II A FAITHFUL DOG 53

heard in Patterdale at breakfast of some things at least that
had happened the day before in South Africa.

It was in this same year, too, of Trafalgar, 1805, that an
unfortunate youth, whose name, Gough, has by a fortuitous
circumstance been immortalized, left Patterdale to cross the
Helvellyn range to Wythburn and Thirlmere, no very des-
perate performance of a truth under ordinary conditions. It
was to his dog however, a small yellow-haired terrier bitch,
that his memory owes such measure of notoriety as surrounds
it. Scores of people have lost their lives amid these lakes
and mountains since Gough's time, and passed into oblivion,
while he and his dog have been sung of by two great poets,
Scott and Wordsworth, and to this day are the occasional
subject of articles and paragraphs. The young man seems to
have been of a cheerful disposition and popular with the natives,
and much addicted to fishing and mountaineering, always being
accompanied by his four-footed companion. He belonged to
a respectable middle-class family in a northern town, and seems
to have been amusing himself for a few months prior to
entering on some definite career. Snow had fallen lightly on
the morning in question (April i8th), but Gough was familiar
with the route, and as he proposed to be away for a day or
two, little notice was taken of his absence, till it was discovered
that he had not been heard of on the other side. In brief it was
three months before his body was found, and then only through
the barking of what was left of his faithful terrier, who had
watched all these weary weeks by her dead master's side. The
body was found by some shepherds, near the banks of Red Tarn,
a wild spot, under Swirrel edge, and the flesh had been eaten
from the bones by birds of prey. Whether the young man
fell from above, or whether he was overcome by illness or
exhaustion, remained a mystery ; but it is of small consequence
nowadays, though the gist of the story which relates to the
amazing fidelity of the little dog well deserves immortality. It
made, indeed, quite a stir at the time throughout England ; and



54 SUNSET ON ULLSWATER chap.

people unfamiliar with the mountains not unnaturally gave
credence to a ghoulish story, that the terrier could only have
maintained life for so long by feeding on her dead master's
flesh. But as a matter of fact, the number of sheep that die
every year on the fells of maggot and other causes, and are
left to rot where they fall, banishes any horror or mystery from
this part of the story, though it in no way detracts from the
wonder of it. The dog recovered, and was taken away by
Gough's friends after they had buried him in Penrith. Let us
hope she was cherished as she deserved.

But let us away with such melancholy tales, and eat our
dinner with a good appetite, though the beck by whose foun-
tain springs the poor man died and the faithful dog watched
sings cheerily under the window. The lake lies smiling
before us ; and what better finish to a day on the road than a
night on the water at such a season as this ? So let us take
boat and rod, and our landlord too, who is both a sportsman
and a waterman, and see what Ullswater looks like beneath
the sunset, the twilight, the darkness and the moon, for we
shall have the last if we are patient.

If any breeze was moving before, it is dead enough now, for
the upper bay is like a mirror, on whose surface rocks and
mountains, trees and islands with all their wealth of colour-
ing live again. As we glide out on to the lake, the sun is just
drooping behind the northern shoulder of Helvellyn, and the
mystery of the afterglow is drawing its purple mantle over a
world of detail on the hither side of it, that but a moment ago
shone with such conspicuous clearness.

And in no long time the shadows on the lake edge grow
blurred, the water changes from glass to polished steel, and the
latter slowly fades into the leaden hues of twilight. The last
gleam has vanished from the mountains around Kirkstone and
the head of Patterdale, and died away upon the summit of
Placefell. But in the meantime we have not been drifting
idly, even in the j)resence of a transformation scene so



II TWILIGHT 55

exquisite as this, but have passed the steamer landing, and
looked in at the rocky caves and wooded, cliffs that culminate in
the much painted crag of Styborough. We are the only boat,
save one, on the whole visible portion of the lake, which strikes
bne as a strange thing at this most jocund season of nature's
year. Even the single boat in question is but carrying two
natives across the bay, armed with gigantic rods, to where the
Goldrill beck finds its outlets. The native of this Lake country
has no faith in anything much less than sixteen feet in the way
of a rod, with a strong preference for something even longer,
whether to catch salmon or three-ounce trout. These
sportsmen are going " bustard " fishing, and the bustard is a
peculiar and time-honoured institution in the Lake country.
The trout of the two counties are well educated — not a doubt of
that, but at the same time they have been, by some means
or other trained up to an hereditary appetite for the bustard,
an article that I am quite sure the most unsophisticated fish
of other latitudes would scorn either by day or night. The
bustard is well named ; it is the size of a moderate salmon fly,
and resembles nothing that crawls upon the land or sails over
the face of the waters. It has a rough yellow body and white
wings, as monstrous and clumsy a caricature of an insect as was
ever offered to a trout. But the trout of Cumberland and
Westmoreland, I am assured, have a wonderful liking for it
between sunset and midnight, and vastly prefer it to the
cunning and delicate contrivances most of us are accustomed,
even at that hour, to think almost indispensable.

There is still plenty of light, though a grey tinge rests upon
the world. We are beside a shelving gravelly beach, and my
companion proclaims that if we are to catch trout this night, it
should surely be here, and indeed for this long time the fish
have been breaking the water with some show of activity, though
in what mood who can say ? I will not bore the reader with the
details of our industry. They are not remarkable, but the
interest at any rate is sufficiently sustained to enfold us in the



56 NIGHT SHADOWS CHAP.

wings of night before we seem to have got well to work. Still,
even four or five handsome little fish, weighing a pound and a
half between them, which is Ullswater size, make a tempting
breakfast at any rate. A light breeze is springing up, and there
is a touch of chill in the air : the moon will soon rise, and
when my guide suggests putting out a trolling line, and taking a
further journey under the steeper eastern shores of the lake,
I am nothing loth, though trolling for trout as a sport is to my
mind of the poorest. But there is a certain weirdness about the
situation, and sensations that recall night journeys in frailer craft
than this stout boat, and through scenes wilder though assuredly
no grander than these, are in no way interrupted by the light
responsibilities of holding a trolling line. The breeze blowing
down Patterdale through the gap at Kirkstone is beginning to
moan in the trees, that cling precariously to the rocky foot of
Birkfell, and to make music imder our keel. The night shadow
of this same Birkfell too, with its thousand feet or so of preci-
pitous and naked boulders, lies somewhat awesomely across our
path, and we can well understand at this eerie moment why the
mountain foxes are so partial not only to rearing their cubs in
its fastnesses, but to turning their faces thither when hard
pressed by the exigencies of the chase.

But stay ! Here is a fish. He has not much chance if the
triple hook is in his jaws, nor is there any great measure of
excitement in bringing him up to the boat, though he ^v'eighs
some three quarters of a pound. Ullswater trout are of
the bright and silvery kind, differing much from those of
Derwentwatcr, wliich run larger, and are thick, short and
richly marked. Ullswater, too, is one of the lakes where that
eminently local fish, the char, is found ; but this species of the
salmonidai has little sporting value, as it lies in deep water
and can only be caught by methods that hardly commend
themselves to the angler who is not fishing for his living. The
char run mostly three or four to the pound, and may be
roughly described as trout richly tinted with red and orange



n MOONRISE 57

hues. On the rare occasions when he takes the fly and leaps
from the water, the angler who might perchance have caught
American brook trout in their native haunts, would be
instantly put in mind of the fontinalis, who are held, I believe,
by some to be of the char species. Such at least was
my experience. But prowling around somewhere, in the
depths of UUswater, with three or four hundred feet of
water above them, are the great grey trout of fabulous size that
are never omitted from ancient accounts of St. Ulpho's lake, and
are still, I believe, reckoned among its inhabitants. In old days,
however, they figured as a regular item in its table of contents;
but I have observed that the most sanguine tackle makers of
the district do not hold out hopes to their southern customers
of drawing such a prize, which I may take conclusively to
mean that it is no longer to be drawn. At any rate my
companion, who is a most ardent Patterdaler, has not suggested
that our minnow, spinning merrily through the dark water forty
yards behind, is likely to have a visit from one of these
monsters of the deep. Indeed it has ceased apparently to
have attraction even for the small fry atop, and it seems we
are opposite Gowbarrow near half way down the lake. The
long-looked-for moon has now risen in full orbed splendour,
and shows even to my inexperienced eye the suggestive
embattled outline of Lyulph's tower, and the shadowy park-
lands with their scattered trees stretching upward to the fells
beyond. We can hear quite plainly too, the steady roar of
Aira force, though the wind is soughing almost ominously
in the woods upon the bank, where an owl is dolefully
hooting, and the ripples beating on our keel with some-
thing of the force of waves. Clouds too are chasing across
the moon, and surely the wraith of the fair Emma might
well choose such a night as this to steal across yonder stretch
of light and shadow, to where Aira force is sounding the
same notes that it sounded six hundred years ago. It must
be near midnight, and full time we turned. The lights that



58 A MIDNIGHT ROW chap.

were twinkling here and there along the shore are now all
quenched, and the fish have long ceased to feed before the
rising wind and waves.

Each bird or beast
That haunts the tangles of the brake,
Or dwells beside the silver lake,
In placid slumber, lies released
From trouble Ijy the touch of night.

We ought to be quoting Wordsworth here, not Virgil. But
in truth, there will be no further opportunity for such philan-
derings, for there is a four mile row against a head wind and
rising sea in prospect ; and Ullswater when it chooses can put
up a storm in which no ordinary boats that ply upon the lake
can live. Indeed, the wind rushes down betimes with such
sudden fury from the mountain passes that the over confident
visitor is apt to find himself storm bound at Gowbarrow or
worse still at Howtoun with nothing for it but to get back by
land as best he may, " and we," says mine host, " have to get the
boats back as best we may."

It is an hour past midnight, when, not without relief and our
task accomplished, we push our boat's nose out of the rough water
into the lea of the landing place. The shadowy forms of the
mountain tops loom in sombre silence above us, for the clouds,
though moving swiftly, are moving high, and there seems no
real ill humour in the night. The thought occurs to me, as
we walk across the meadows to where a single light gleaming
from the sleeping village marks our bourne, that we of this
generation in England are inclined to overlook the out-
door attractions of the night in curiously wholesale fashion.
Many of us, no doubt, at some period of our lives and in
some quarter of the world, have been obliged to travel often
and far beneath the moon and stars ; and speaking for
myself such journeys seem to have left anything but barren
memories. The modern dinner hour accounts in part no doubt
for this neglect of night's sombre charms. Wordsworth, Ue



II A NOBLE SOTJTUDE 59

Quincey, and the rest of them — not as enthusiastic nature-
lovers, but as a matter of course, — when paying visits and so
forth, used to walk great distances at night, both in winter and
summer. Wordsworth, for instance, leaves his friend's house
at Patterdale on the occasion already alluded to at ten o'clock
on a November night, to walk the twelve miles home to Rydal,
over Kirkstone Pass, as a most ordinary proceeding.

While the tourist will find upon the western or Helvellyn
side of Patterdale the finest blend of dale scenery and notable
mountain tops and routes that land a good walker by luncheon
time, if he so wishes it, at Grasmere, Thirlmere or other
desirable centres, upon the other or eastern side a country
no less worthy of exploration stretches away from the very
shores of Ullswater. In fact when you have crossed the valley
meadows at the head of the lake, and climbed on to the top
of the lower rampart of Place Fell, there spreads before you a
practically illimitable stretch of sheep and deer forest,
unbroken by house or village or fence or wall. A fine vista
of rolling moorland and bold outstanding hills is here, with the
long ridge of the High Street (vulgarism of Ystryd) bounding
the eastern view. Hartsop and Rest Dodd, Gray Crag and
Kidsty Pike, and many other hills of rugged character, and
twenty-five hundred feet or thereabouts of altitude, break
the surface of a prospect that is more suggestive of continuous
solitude than almost any part of the Lake Country. Bore-
dale, Martindale and Bannerdale, lonely glens enough but for
the joyous becks that water them, drop down through the
moorland wilderness towards the green levels of Howtoun.
The High Street ridge, like a mighty wall, with its red, storm-
washed sides, hems in, as I have said, our vision. It takes
one's fancy too from the uncompromising directness with
which for miles it cleaves the sky line. It is ])rcminent
from every peak of note in Cumberland or Westmoreland, and
well deserves such distinction, if only for the great Roman road
that may yet be traced along its summit. Hidden behind it,



6o RED DEER chap.

like a miniature of its greater sister here beneath us, Hawes-
water winds its beauteous course amid woods and rocks, and,
with Mardale at its head, may be said to divide the Lake
district proper from the moors of Shap.

Over all this country, the ancient red deer roam in their
wild state, as on Exmoor. But the range is much smaller,
nor are they systematically hunted, which no doubt accounts
for their being more frequently in evidence to wandering
anglers or pedestrians. I have myself had no such luck,
but I have been told by men who often fish the lonely
lakes of Hayeswater and Angletarn, that it is no un-
common thing to see a herd of these noble animals drinking
on the shore. They must be familiar enough however with
the note of hound and horn, for the Ullswater fox-hounds,
kennelled in Patterdale, regularly hunt these sohtudes. It is
lonely enough as it is lovely in June, and I have wandered
here all day without seeing a sign of human life but an
occasional farmer looking up his sheep. For these last, at this
season of the year, are sorely beset by the maggot, that curse
of the fell countries, which drives the wretched animals into all
sorts of holes and corners, where they perish to a certainty if
not hunted up and doctored. The life of the fell farmer is
very far from all that fancy is apt to paint it. When wool was
two shillings a pound, and Herdwick wethers fifty per cent,
above their present figure, it was another matter ; but nowa-
days, with the first at sevenpence, and the last at twenty
shillings, to speak approximately, it must somewhat take the
heart out of the further struggle with floods and foxes, summer
maggots, and winter snow storms. The sheep industry, I need
hardly say, is far and away the chief business of the mountain
districts. Quarrying and mining occupy but a fraction of the
people, and, happily for the landscape at any rate, there are
no Festiniogs and Bethesdas here. The country too has
probably the finest breed of mountain sheep to be found in
these islands, and it has been cherished for centuries with care



II



HERDWICK SHEEP 6i



and pride. From Skiddaw to Black Combe, from Ennerdale to
Shap, the Herdwick sheep is the pivot on which all local life
not wholly absorbed in the tourist business turns. Yet I met
a midland county sheep breeder the other day who had never
heard of them, so little does one half of the world know how
the other half lives, even when occupied in the same trade !
The Herdwick runs a trifle heavier than the Welsh or Exmoor,
though of course lighter than the Cheviot, or black-faced High-
lander, which, seeing that, like the former, he makes his living
without help to speak of, is to the credit of his stock, admitting
at the same time that the mutton is as good, which is, I think,
the case. The merest amateur in such matters, too, will see at
once that the Herdwick carries a heavier fleece than the Welsh.
Above all, the grey colour of the wool will be immediately
noticeable, though the stranger would at first probably take it for
granted that it was merely the result of dipping, and make no
comment. Nothing, strange to say, is more Hke the grey
colouring of the fleeces grown on these pure sweet fells than
that you sometimes see on sheep pastured amid the smoke of
a great city, and it is remarkable that the wool of Herdwicks
bred in Wales turns to pure white again. The lambs
are mostly piebald, black and white, with a humour of
appearance all their own, though their fleeces tone down
afterwards to the right shade. Farmers tell me, however,
that the tendency to black wool is always very strong with
Herdwicks, and has to be contended with in breeding. They
are apt, moreover, to run to horns in the ewes, which is
incorrect. The Lakeland farmer is for the most part of
the smaller yeoman variety. With the inevitable exceptions
he is a plain working farmer, employing little labour outside
his own family, and personally tending his own stock. Most
of them were at one time freeholders, using the term
broadly ; a few of them still are. The Westmoreland and
Cumberland statesmen {estates tnen) were once the leading



62 THE STATESMEN chap

feature in the social economy of the country, varying in their
holdings from thirty to a thousand acres.

They were not ordinary yeomen, these Bells, Brownriggs and
Bowes, Hodgsons, Nicholsons, Bowmans, and the rest of
them, like those of whom so few survive in the South, and
whose small estates have lain for all time wedged in between
those of greater folks, to whom they paid unquestioned social
deference. The Cumbrian or Westmoreland dale was often a
small republic, among whom the larger freeholders were only
''primi inter pares," making no pretension to social ex-