CHAPTER IX.

THE OLD MAN.

ASCENT FROM THE MINES—THE KERNEL CRAG RAVENS—PADDY' END AND SIMON’ NICK—LEVERSWATER, &C.— THE SUMMIT—“OLD MAN,” UNDE DERIVATUR—ENUMERATION OF OBJECTS SEEN FROM THE SUMMIT—MOUNTAIN AND MERE—DALE AND DOWN—SEA AND SHORE—TOWER AND TOWN—THE DESCENT.

It were well now to delay no longer the favourite and finest of all Conistonian excursions; therefore again gird your loins with strength, and prepare to ascend the Old Man. For that purpose, I think the pleasantest, though not the nearest route is directly past the Mines; so, leaving on your right the works you have been inspecting, you take a very rough and very steep cart-road winding its weary way up the mountain, and pass between another more elevated and more recent range of works and workings styled Paddy'-end—after the discoverer of the richness of the veins in that direction—and a high precipice of solid stone called Kernel Crag. On this crag, probably for ages, a pair of ravens have annually had their nest, and though their young have again and again been destroyed by the shepherds, they always return to this favourite spot; and frequently, when one of the parents has been shot in the brooding season, the survivor has immediately been provided with another helpmate; and, what is still more extraordinary, and beautifully and literally illustrative of a certain impressive scripture passage—it happened, a year or two since, that both the parent birds were shot, whilst the nest was full of unfledged young, and their duties were immediately undertaken by a couple of strange ravens, who attended assiduously to the wants of the orphan brood, until they were fit to forage for themselves.

[Sidenote: FATAL INDISCRETION.]

In the face of the precipice to the left, over Paddy'-end, you may note a nearly perpendicular fissure, or niche. It is called Simon’ nick, also after the discoverer, and thereby hangs a tale. The said Simon, to the great mystification, and greater mortification of his compeers, succeeded in obtaining large quantities of rich ore from this nick, wherein no one but himself could discover any indications of it. They were all, of course, very curious and anxious to fathom this mystery, but they could make nothing of it. Simon resisted all enquiries, direct or insidious, till one unfortunate night when, “hot with the Tuscan grape,” or, to express it less poetically, the Black Bull malt, he divulged the fatal secret that he owed his mysterious and envied success to the co-operation of the Fairies. For this breach of confidence, he received condign punishment, for he never again fell in with anything worth working; and becoming reckless from the consequences of his own indiscretion, he abandoned all caution in his perilous operations, and the charge in one of the holes he had prepared for blasting exploding prematurely, Simon paid the penalty of his imprudence with his life.

Still toiling upwards, you soon attain the edge or lip of the basin containing Leverswater, one of the finest of our mountain lakelets, nearly circular in shape, surrounded by very steep grassy slopes and magnificent rocky precipices, and measuring upwards of a mile in circumference. Were Mr Wordsworth here, he might again make the bewailing inquiry—

“Is there _no_ spot of English ground secure From rash assault?”

for you may observe that even this lonely tarn is rendered subservient to purposes of “sordid industry” (I feel spiteful at that phrase) by having its waters dammed up, so as to form it into a mere vulgar reservoir of water for the dozen or two of water-wheels at the works below. And, moreover, as you follow the path along the southern verge of Leverswater, under the noble offset from the Old Man, called Brimfell, you fall in with very plain indications that mining is pursued, and that vigorously, even up here. In one of these levels very rich ore has been found, including, in minute quantities, copper in a malleable state, which, if I am correctly informed, is the only instance of native malleable copper being found in Britain.

[Sidenote: A STIFF PULL.]

You wend your way along a very uneven path on the hill-side to the west of Leverswater, and when you arrive at a point about opposite to that on which you approached it, and nearly under a precipice called Oukrigg (Wool-crag?) you take the very steep ascent to your left, and follow up a small water-course, until you observe more on your left a fine dell dished, as it were, out of the hill-side, and thickly dotted with sheep. It is called the Gillcove, because, from time immemorial, the sheep belonging to a farm in the village called the Gill (or Ghyll), have been depastured upon it. You traverse this same cove, and rise over the shoulder of Brimfell, regularly gaining upon the mountain; but the ascent becomes dismally laborious here, so much so, that you are fain to lie down to recover breath, and whilst doing so, what say you to a little familiar chat with the Old Man himself?—Listen!

Old Man! Old Man!!—Your sides are _brant_, And dreadfully hard to climb; My strength fails fast, and my breath is scant, So I'll e'en rest here and rhyme.

“Yea, my slopes are steep and my dells are deep, And my broad bald brow is high, And you'll ne'er, should you rhyme till the limit of time, Find worthier theme than I!

“My summit I shroud in the weltering cloud, And I laugh at the tempest’s din; I am girdled about with stout rock without, And I've countless wealth within.

“My silence is broke by the raven’s croak, And the bark of the mountain fox; And mine echoes awake to the brown glead’s shriek, As he floats past my hoary rocks.”

Old Man! Old Man! many an age Has glided away while you've stood, And much has been graven on history’s page, Since your summit was laved by the flood.

“Yea, nations are dead and centuries fled, Whilst here, like a trusty guard, O'er mine own sweet vale, braving thunder and gale, I have held close watch and ward.

“And many a change, portentous and strange, Hath swept o'er this change-loving earth; Yet here do I stand, and I frown o'er the land With the aspect I wore at my birth.”

[Sidenote: THE PINNACLE.]

There! you perceive Shakspere is correct as ever when he says we may find sermons in stones, and I trust you will profit by the Old Man’s homily.

Resuming your clamber, you, by and bye, come out upon the high narrow ridge connecting the Old Man with the fells behind him. It is now all plane sailing, and you soon arrive at the pinnacle, or pillar, or pile of stones upon the mountain’s “very topmost towering height,” which is, according to the best authority, 2,632 feet above the sea.

[Sidenote: THE OLD MAN’S GODFATHERS.]

In the place of this solid erection there stood, a few years ago, an externally similar, though larger pile containing a chamber, which formed a welcome shelter to such shepherds and tourists as happened to be overtaken on the mountain by bad weather. This chambered pile was pulled down by certain officers employed on the trigonometrical survey, or rather by their orders; and, by the bye, I have heard that the labourer who undertook the demolition had five pounds for the job, and earned the satisfactory wages of somewhere near one pound per hour by it. Be this as it may, those gentlemen ought, when they restored the erection, to have made the new equal in all respects to the old one, instead of giving us a pile inferior both in its useful and ornamental attributes. Any erection of this description on a hill-top being locally called a “man,” this is said by certain shallow etymologists to give the _Old_ Man his name, as though a mountain of his respectability would stand unchristened, until somebody, like the “three rosy-cheeked school-boys, the tallest not more than the height of a counsellor’s bag,” in the Laureate's poem on “Perseverance” (I believe), undertook and completed the task of rearing a pile of stones upon his vertex. The Rev. W. Ford, who has written one of the many “Guides to the Lakes,” says there are three piles on the mountain top—“the Old Man, his wife, and son,” thereby inferring that the name of the hill bears some allusion to the featherless biped of similar designation. This is certainly wide of the mark, but there are two reasonable derivations of this mountain’s quaint appellative, and both are probably correct. Some say the name comes from two British or Saxon words _Alt_, high, and _Maen_, crag or rocky hill, which pretty well describe the Old Man. Others say that the same Roman soldiery who called their beautiful station at the head of Windermere _Amabilis Situs_ (since degenerated into Ambleside), called this hill _Altus Mons_, which, by a natural metonomy, gradually became _Auld Man_, for, be it remembered, the natives of this immediate vicinage, even at the present day, pronounce _old_ in the Scotch fashion.

[Sidenote: “KINDRED HILLS.”]

The view from this same Old Man is, in my opinion, and in that of many others, unequalled in England; and though, on the north and east, the prospect is somewhat limited by its kindred hills, they are hills such as you would not have removed, if you could, even to enlarge the prospect, for they comprise all the English mountains worthy of notice, and, in other directions, some of those of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

Commencing here at the south-west, you have Blackcombe, which is not seen to very great advantage, in as much as you are looking down upon it, a mode of inspection which you must know to be unfavourable to the dignity of either mountain or man.

Near to it is a tarn called Devock Water, which contains trout of peculiarly excellent quality, traditionally said to have been imported by the Monks of Furness from Italy, and it fully supports the character of those holy men as judges of good living, for no one should say he has eaten trout, till once he has tasted those of Devock Water. The next hill of any mark is Birksfell, which is a striking object, not so much on account of its altitude—for that is no great matter—as its isolated position and conical shape. Then you see Scawfell and the Pikes, followed up by Great End, Great Gable, and Bowfell, beyond which, more to the east, is Skiddaw, and beyond Skiddaw are to be seen the dim outlines of the Scotch hills about Langholm. Still bringing the eye round in the course of the sun, you look at Blencathra, and then “the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn.” Nearly in the same line, but much nearer, you have Langdale Pikes, and in the side of them Stickle Tarn glistens like a gem in a lady’s hair. Recurring to the more distant line, you see Fairfield, Kirkstone, High Street, and Hillbell. You have overlooked very many important mountains, but I have enumerated the most prominent as seen from the Old Man. Rather nearer than Hillbell is Wansfell, at the foot of which you may perceive Ambleside, and a little lower, a considerable portion of Windermere, with numerous seats upon its banks, Wray Castle the most conspicuous; and nearer and more to the right, the vale and lake of Esthwaite, with the pretty village of Sawrey (which Wilson calls “scarcely a village indeed, but rocks, glades, and coppices bedropt with dwellings!”) smiling in the sun, at its south-eastern extremity. A little farther to the right, another portion of the “river lake” is visible, and beyond that a remarkable succession of elevated ridgy moorlands stretches across the view, until it is stopped by a portion of that chain of hills called the “Backbone of England.” You remark that, if yonder ridge be in reality a portion of England’s backbone, she must have been a ricketty child, for there are inequalities upon it such as no healthy spine would exhibit.

[Sidenote: A WIDE SWEEP.]

More to the right, the view becomes more extended, for it embraces much of that part of Lancashire lying to the west and south of the county town, watered by the Ribble and the Wyre, and at the western extremity of which you can distinctly see the town and port of Fleetwood. Stretching far in-land from it, you have all the majestic Bay of Morecambe, looking so beautiful with its numerous rivers meandering along its level sands, that you fancy it would be almost a sin to carry into execution the project of embanking it. Following along its shores, your eyes come to the town and castle of “John O'Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster;” then the wooded promontory of Cartmel, jutting into the bay, and, on its north-western side, the fertile and undulating district of Low Furness, with the Isle of Walney stretched along its seaward side like a natural breakwater. Then you look upon the miles of smooth, flat sand, over which the Duddon is

“Gliding in silence with unfettered sweep.”

Directly over that, and across the sea, are to be seen very plainly some of the hills of Wales, Snowdon, I believe, amongst the rest; and you have under your eye the whole of that portion of the Irish sea stretching from Wales to the Isle of Man, and thence to the Mull of Galloway and Burrow Head, and, again, a considerable portion of the Solway Frith. I am told that in “certain conditions of the atmosphere,” the high hill in Ireland, called Slieve Donard, where O'Neale entertained Rokeby and Mortham, and

“Gave them each sylvan joy to know, Slieve Donard’s cliffs and woods could shew”—

is to be seen between the Scottish headlands and the Isle of Man. If it be so, and there is no good reason to doubt it, it seems that, from the Old Man, the eye can at one sweep behold all the divisions of the Kingdom, as well as “the Kingdom of Man.”

[Sidenote: A FACT FOR NATURALISTS.]

You may now take a look at the objects nearer home, and perhaps the most striking is the tarn, occupying a concavity in the eastern side of the Old Man, and called, on the principle of _lucus a non lucendo_, Low-wat-hung by a tremendous precipitous range called Buckbarrow Crags, which, like Dow Crags, is a favourite place of refuge with foxes; and upon its ledges sheep frequently get “crag-fast,” from which predicament they have to be rescued by an adventurous shepherd lowered over the beetling precipice by a rope, the animal, aware of its peril, allowing itself to be slung in the rope and drawn up. Low-water is remarkable for trouts of large dimensions, and once, like the tarn sung by the poet, had one of enormous size supposed to be immortal. It was frequently seen by the men working in the slate quarry above, and it was not unfrequently hooked, but no tackle was strong enough to land such a monster. So much for its strength: but, alack for its immortality,—it was found one morning dead upon the shore. I am too tenacious of my character for veracity to tell you its weight and size; but, according to my informant, nature, compassionating its great age and its high stormy location, had furnished it with a covering of _hair_, a fact unparalleled, as I think, in the annals of ichthyology.

[Sidenote: TWO DEATHS.]

Directly under Low-water, you have a bird's-eye view of the works belonging to the Mines, which, with the roads intersecting the hills about them, have a rather odd appearance. Beyond these, Weatherlam rears his massive cone to nearly an equal height with you.

Down to the right, you have a delicious view of the vale of Monk and Church Conistone, in early autumn most beautifully chequered with fields of ripe and ripening grain. But I have already dilated _usque ad nauseam_ (sufficiently to sicken a dog) upon the beauties of that same valley, so let it rest, and commence your descent, taking a path to the southward of Low-water, through amongst the slate-quarries, which, for many years deserted, are again in active operation. One of these, called Saddle Stone quarry, was the scene, some years ago, of two melancholy deaths,—one of them mysterious, the other singular. On a Monday morning, the labourers discovered a man’s hat floating in some water in a hole a good way into the working, and, on a search being instituted, they soon after found the body of a Mr Dixon, a respectable and intelligent native of the dale. It was supposed that he had sauntered into the level, and, whilst directing his attention to the air-shaft above, had walked into the water.

[Sidenote: CHOICE OF ROUTES.]

The other was one of the labourers, named Gould, who, with his fellow-workmen, had sat down to rest, or dine, somewhere under the said shaft. He was leaning back, when a stone, scarcely larger than a good walnut, fell from the shaft, and striking him upon the forehead, killed him on the spot. Passing this ill-omened hole, you follow the steep path downwards, and pass considerably to your left the “Pudding Stone,” the largest boulder stone I have seen, excepting that near Keswick. It is higher than it is long or broad, and rests upon a ridge, where it is puzzling to conceive how it could have stayed by chance. You also pass on the left, but nearer to you, two singularly rugged hillocks called High and Low Crawberry, with Crawberry Hause between. On the right is the Bell, a precipitous rocky hill, where ravens, and buzzards, or gleads, take up their abode; and descending still through an extensive rocky pasture, rejoicing in the euphonious title of the Scrow, formerly covered with wood, as is evidenced by the traces of the charcoal pits yet visible, you reach a wooden bridge, and cross it into the Mines road, with which you are already so well acquainted, that it is scarcely incumbent upon me to rave any further at this present speaking.

I would by no means bind you to ascend or descend the Old Man by the routes I have described. I merely recommend them as offering most objects likely to amuse, and as being considered the easiest for pedestrian adventurers. But, by taking the road to the slate quarries, you may ride a steady pony to within a quarter of a mile of the summit,—or by following the Walna Scar road for a mile or two, and taking the path by Gaits Water, you may, with one or two short intervals of leading, ride to the very top; the road, however, is some miles longer, seeing that you must circumvent the Old Man before you attain your object by this route, and you will find it no trifling task to get round _him_.

[Sidenote: PROPER SELF-APPRECIATION.]

During this and the preceding ramble, it might, perhaps, be expected of me to say something upon geology. The only excuse I have to offer for this serious omission—whether sufficient or otherwise—is, that I know nothing about it. I can, however, do the next best thing to lecturing on the subject myself, and that is recommend you to peruse the letters of Professor Sedgwick to Mr Wordsworth on the Geology of the Lake District, which you will find in a handsome and well got up guide-book, published by Mr Hudson, of Kendal, or the chapters on the same subject by Professor Phillips, contained in another guide-book, of which Adam and Charles Black, of Edinburgh, are the publishers, either or both of which are amply sufficient, if well studied, to enable you to talk geology in any society very respectably. I am a very superficial observer myself, and only pretend to point out what is amusing, leaving the instructive to abler hands and wiser heads.