1879. 1879. [Pg 6] [Pg 7]...

Books about British mountains are mostly of two kinds, the popular, written for the tourist, and the technical, written by the rock-climber. The author of this little study of the hills of Carnarvonshire and Cumberland is aware that it cannot claim acceptance under either of those heads, lacking as it does both the usefulness of the general “guide,” and the thrill of the cragsman’s adventure: he publishes it, nevertheless, as at least a true expression of the love which our mountains can inspire

The pilgrimages of which I write are not made in Switzerland; my theme is a homelier and more humble one. Yet it is a mistake to think that to see great or at least real mountains it is necessary to go abroad; for the effect of highland scenery is not a matter of mere height, but is due far more to shapeliness than to size. There is no lack of British Alps within our reach, if we know how to regard them; as, for instance, the gloomily impressive Coolins of Skye, the granite peaks of Arran, or, t

It is commonly said that the approach to Snowdon begins at Capel Curig; but this is a very shortsighted and unimaginative way of regarding so rich an experience as a pilgrimage to the heart of Wales. To the true mountain lover, the approach begins at Euston Square. Yes, there, in the great busy station, when you have uttered the magic word, “Bettws-y-Coed,” and have received what looks like a mere railway ticket, but is, in fact, a passport to the enchanted fastnesses of the hills—from that mome

If “angry grandeur,” as has been said, is the feature of the Carnarvonshire mountains, that of the Cumbrian Fells may be described as friendly grouping. Unlike the proud oligarchies of Snowdon and the Glyders, we see here a free and equal democracy, a brood of giant brothers, linked together with rocky arm in arm, and with no crowned heads claiming marked predominance over their fellows. It is collectively, rather than singly, that the Lake mountains impress us. “In magnitude and grandeur,” says

“What pleasure lives in height? the shepherd sang.” Only a very lovesick shepherd, who had his own reasons for praising the valley at the expense of the mountain, could have asked a question so foolish; for the pleasures of the heights are manifold and beyond count. 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

To the rambler upon these hills few things are so attractive, next to the hills themselves, as the glimpses which he gains into the ways of the non-human people that have their homes there. It thrills us to remember that the mountains, lonely though we call them, have for centuries on centuries had their own populous dramas of life and death, and that their rocky tenements were inhabited, in some cases down to comparatively modern times, by the bear, the wolf, the boar, the wild cat, and other h

We talk of the barrenness of the mountains, and barren in a sense they are, when contrasted with the teeming wealth of the plain, yet the bleakest of them, if studied with sympathy and insight, will be found to have a living and life-giving freshness of its own. Now and then, perhaps, when face to face with some scene of more than common severity, we are tempted to exclaim, with Scott: But austereness, too, has its place, and often is to the mountains what fertility is to the fields, not a blemi

Mountains have in all ages given asylum to free races. Has the time come when a free race must give asylum to its mountains? If we are to have any voice in the answer, the question is one which, in this country at least, cannot much longer be set aside; for though the encroachments of “civilization” on wild Nature have been more or less discussed since the famous “Tours” of Thomas Pennant created the modern tourist, and sent him roaming through the hills, the problem of how to preserve our mount