There is a tale by Herman Melville which deals with the strangeness of a first meeting between the inmates of two houses which face each other, far and high away, on opposite mountain ranges, and yet, though daily visible, have remained for years as mutually unknown as if they belonged to different worlds. It was with this story in my mind that I approached for the first time the moorland mass of Ingleborough, long familiar as seen from the Lake mountains, a square-topped height on the horizon to the south-east, but hitherto unvisited by me owing to the more imperious claims of the Great Gable and Scawfell. But now, at last, I found myself on pilgrimage to Ingleborough: the impulse, long delayed, had seized me to stand on the summit of the Yorkshire fell, and, looking north-westward, to see the scene reversed.
As I ascended the barren marshy slopes that form the eastern flank of the hill, I realised once again how much more the labour of an ascent depends upon the character of the ground than upon the actual height to be scaled. Ingleborough is under 2,400 feet; yet it is far more toilsome to climb than many a rocky peak in Wales or Cumberland that rises hundreds of feet higher, and it is a relief at length to get a firm foothold on the rocks of millstone grit which form the summit. Thence, from the edges which drop sharply from the flat top, one looks out on the somewhat desolate fells stretching away on three sides—Pen-y-ghent to the east, Whernside to the north, and to the south the more distant forest of Pendle—but westward there is the gleam of sand or water in Morecambe Bay, and the eye hastens to greet the dim but ever glorious forms of the Delectable Mountains of Lakeland.
Crags and Caverns.
In the affections of the mountain-lover Ingleborough can never be the rival of one of these; 8indeed, in the strict sense, it is not a mountain at all, but a high moor built on a base of limestone with a cap of grit. 9Still, there is grandeur in the steep scarps that guard its central stronghold; and its dark summit, when viewed from a distance crowning the successive tiers of grey terraces, has a strength and wildness of its own, and even suggests at points a likeness to the massive tower of the Great Gable. To one looking down from the top of most edges on the scattered piles of limestone below the effect is very curious. You see, perhaps, a mile or two distant, what looks at first sight like a flock of sheep at pasture, but is soon discovered to be a stone flock which has no mortal shepherd. In other parts are wide white plateaus which, when visited, turn out to be a wilderness of low flat rocks, everywhere weather-worn and water-worn, scooped and scalloped into cells and basins, and so intersected by channels filled with ferns and grasses that one has to walk warily over it as over a reef at low tide.
There is nothing more delightful, in descending a mountain, than to follow the leading of some rapid beck from its very source to the valley; and it is rather disconcerting, in these limestone regions, that the cavernous nature of the ground should make the presence of the streams so intermittent, and that one’s chosen companion should not unfrequently disappear, just when his value is most appreciated, into some “gaping gill” or pot-hole.
Birds and Flowers.
It is said of Walt Whitman that sometimes when a pilgrim was privileged to walk with him, and was perhaps thinking that their acquaintance was ripening to friendship, the good grey poet, with a curt nod and a careless “good-bye,” would turn off abruptly and be gone. Even so it is with these wayward streams that course down the sides of Ingleborough. Just when one is on the best of terms with them, they vanish and are no more.
Except for the rabbits that find ready-made burrows in these stony warrens, there is little sign of life on the fells. The wheatear and ring-ouzel flit along the grey stone walls, and the grassy uplands are the breeding-place of peewit and curlew—at this season especially resentful of an intruder’s approach. Two curlews followed me almost to the highest ridge, again and again sailing round in their strange, stiff flight, with loud accusing cries, as if here, at least, it were no fiction that “trespassers will be prosecuted.”
Not the smallest of Ingleborough’s attractions is that it is the haunt of certain rare and beautiful flowers, as has been pointed out in J. W. Farrer’s interesting books on Alpine plants and rock-gardens. These the mere visitor may hardly hope to find; but, without aspiring to the rarities, one may enjoy in the early summer the vernal sandwort and the mossy saxifrage on the upper ridges, and the butterwort and the water-avens below. To me it was worth the journey to Ingleborough to see the graceful little bird’s-eye primrose in perfection on its native banks.
More by Henry Salt
- SanctuaryThe Daily News, July 14, 1919
- Nature Lessons from George MeredithSeed-time Supplement, January 1892
- Flowers of the FellsThe Daily News and Leader, May 24, 1916
- The Sty Head PassThe Daily News and Leader, October 1, 1913
- The Wettest Spot In EnglandThe Daily News and Leader, September 3, 1912