Part 9 (1/2)

Last, but not least, in the later months of summer, is the mountain thistle (_carduus heterophyllus_), or the ”melancholy thistle” as it is often called--a t.i.tle which seems to have small relevance, unless all plants of a grave and dignified bearing are to be so named. Do men expect to gather figs of thistles, that they should demand the simple gaiety of the cowslip or the primrose from such a plant as this, whose rich purple flowers, spineless stem, and large parti-coloured leaves--deep green above, white below--mark it as one of the most handsome, as it is certainly the most gracious and benevolent of its tribe?

As I walked down the valley, on a wet morning in July, to take train at Middleton, twenty-four hours of rain had turned the river through which I had easily waded on the previous day, into a flood that was terrifying both in aspect and sound. It was no time for flower-hunting; but even then the wonders of the place were not exhausted; for along the hedgerows I saw in plenty that same stately thistle, which in most districts where it occurs is viewed with some interest and curiosity, but in Teesdale is a roadside weed--subject, I was shocked to observe, to the insolence of the pa.s.sers-by, who, knowing not what they do, maltreat it as if it were some vulgar pest of the fields, a thing to be hacked at and trampled on. Even so, I saw in it a discrowned king, who ”nothing common did or mean.”

XXII

APRIL IN SNOWDONIA

It is Easter Sunday . . . the hills are high, and stretch away to heaven.--DE QUINCEY.

SO wrote De Quincey in one of his finest dream-fugues. There seems, in truth, to be a certain fitness in the turning of men's thoughts at the spring season to the heights of the mountains, where, as nowhere else, the cares and ailments of the winter time are forgotten; and it is a noticeable fact that these upland districts are now as thronged with visitors during Easter week as in August itself. As I write, I am sitting by a wood fire under a high rock in a sheltered nook at Capel Curig, with a biting north-easter blowing overhead and an occasional snow-squall whitening the hillsides around, while the upper ridges are covered in places with great fields and s.p.a.ces of snow, which at times loom dim and ghostly through the haze, and then gleam out gloriously in the interludes of suns.h.i.+ne. The scenery at the top of Snowdon, the Glyders, Carnedd Llewelyn, and the other giants of the district has been quite Alpine in character. The wind has drifted the snow in great pillowy ma.s.ses among the rocks, or piled it in long cornices along the edges, and on several days when the air was at its keenest, the snow fields have been crisp and firm, and have afforded excellent footing as a change from the rough ”screes” and crags; at other times, when the sun has shone out warmly, the snow has been soft and treacherous, and the spectacle has often been seen of the too trustful tourist struggling waistdeep.

Mid-April in Snowdonia, when March has been cold and wet, shows scarcely an advance from midwinter as far as the blossoming of flowers is concerned. Down by the coast the land is gay with gorse and primroses, but in the bleak upland dales that radiate from the great mountains hardly a bloom is to be seen; nor do the river banks and marshy pastures as yet show so much as a kingcup, a spearwort, or a celandine. The visitors have come in their mult.i.tudes to walk, to climb, to cycle, to motor, to take photographs, or to take fish, as the case may be; but if one of them were to confess that he had come to look for flowers he would indeed surprise the natives--still more if he were to point to the upper ramparts of the mountains, among the rocks and snows and clouds, as the place of his design.

Yet it is there that we must climb, if we would see the pride of the purple saxifrage, the earliest of our mountain flowers, blest by botanists with the c.u.mbrous name of _saxifraga oppositifolia_, and often grown by gardeners, who know it as a Swiss immigrant, but not as a British native. A true Alpine, it is not found in this country much below 2,000 feet, and in Switzerland its range is far higher, for it is a neighbour and a lover of the snows. Small and slight as it may seem, when compared with some of its more splendid brethren of the Alps, it has the distinction of a high-bred race, the character of the genuine mountaineer. It is a wearer of the purple, in deed as well as in name.

But our approach to the home of the saxifrage is not to be accomplished without toil, in weather which is a succession of boisterous squalls.

Under such a gale we have literally to push our way in a five-mile walk to the foot of the hills, and as we climb higher and higher up the slopes we have a ceaselesstussle with the strong, invisible foe who buffets us from every side in turn, while he hisses against the sharp edges of the crags, or growls with dull subterranean noises under the piles of fallen rocks. As for the streams, they are blown visibly out of their steep channels and carried in light spray across the hillside, while sheets of water are lifted from the surface of the lake. Not till we reach the base of the great escarpment which forms the north-east wall of the mountain are we able to draw breath in peace; for there, under the topmost precipices, flecked with patches of snow, is a strange and blissful calm. But now, just when our search begins, the mists, which have long been circling overhead, creep down and fill the upland hollow where we stand, cutting off our view not only of the valley below but of the range of cliffs above, and confining us in a sequestered cloudland of our own. Still climbing along a line of snowdrifts which follows a ridge of rocks, and which serves at once as a convenient route for an ascent and a safe guide for a return, we scan the likely-looking corners and crevices for the object of our pilgrimage. At first in vain; and then fears begin to a.s.sail us that we may be doomed to disappointment. Can we have come too early, even for so early a plant, in a backward season? Or have some wandering tourists or roving knights of the trowel (for such there are) robbed the mountain-side of its gem--for this saxifrage, owing to the brightness of its petals on the grey and barren slopes, is so conspicuous as to be at the mercy of the pa.s.ser-by.

But even as we stand in doubt there is a gleam of purple through the mist, and yonder, on a boss of rock, is a cl.u.s.ter of the rubies we have come not to steal but to admire. What strikes one about the purple saxifrage, when seen at close quarters, its many bright flowerets peering out from a cus.h.i.+on of moss, is the largeness of the blossoms in proportion to the shortness of the stems; a precocious, wide-browed little plant, it looks as if the cares of existence at these wintry alt.i.tudes had given it a somewhat thoughtful cast. At a distance it makes a splash of colour on the rocks, and from the high cliffs above it hangs out, here and there, in tufts that are fortunately beyond reach.[17]

[Footnote 17: For a charming description of the purple saxifrage, see _Holidays in High Lands_, by Hugh Macmillan (1869).]

Having paid our homage to the flower, we leave it on its lofty throne among the clouds, and descend by snow-slopes and scree-slides to the windy, blossomless valley beneath. A month hence, when the season of the Welsh poppy, the globe-flower, and the b.u.t.terwort is beginning, the reign of the purple saxifrage will be at an end. To be appreciated as it deserves, it must be seen not as a poor captive of cultivation, but in its free, wild environment, among the remotest fastnesses of the mountains.

The wild animal life on the hills, so noteworthy in the later spring, seems as yet to have hardly awakened. We saw a white hare one afternoon on Carnedd Llewelyn, but that was the only beast of the mountains that crossed our path during eight days' climbing, nor were the birds so numerous as might have been expected. The croak of the raven was heard at times, in his high breeding-places, and on another occasion there was a triple conflict in the air between a raven, a buzzard, and a hawk. On the lower moorlands the curlew was beginning to arrive from his winter haunts by the seash.o.r.e, and small flocks of gulls, driven inland by the winds, were hovering over the waters of Llyn Ogwen, where we saw several of them mobbing a solitary heron, who seemed much embarra.s.sed by their onslaught, until he succeeded in getting his great wings into motion.

But if bird-life is still somewhat dormant in these lofty regions, there have been plenty of human migrants on the wing. From our high watch-tower, we saw daily, far below us, the long line of motorists--those terrestrial birds of prey--speeding along the white roads, and flying past a hundred entrancing spots, as if their object were to see as little as possible of what they presumably came to see.

Flocks of cyclists, too, were visible here and there, avoiding the cars as best they could, and drinking not so much ”the wind of their own speed,” in the poet's words, as the swirl and dust of the motors; while on the bypaths and open hillsides swarmed the happier foot-travellers, pilgrims in some cases from long distances over the mountains, or skilled climbers with ropes coiled over their shoulders and faces set sternly towards some beetling crag or black gully in the escarpment above. In one respect only are they all alike--that they are birds of pa.s.sage and are here only for the holiday. Soon they will be gone, and then the ancient silence will settle down once more upon the hills, and buzzard and raven will be undisturbed, until July and August bring the great summer incursion.

XXIII

FLOWER-GAZING _IN EXCELSIS_

I gazed, and gazed, but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought.

WORDSWORTH.

THERE is no more inspiring pastime than flower-gazing under the high crags of Snowdon. The love of flowers reveals a new and delightful aspect of the mountain life, and leads its votaries into steeps and wilds which, as they lie aloof from the usual ways of the climber, might otherwise escape notice. It must be owned that our c.u.mbrian and Cambrian hills are not rich in flowers as Switzerland is rich; one cannot here step out on the mountain-side and see great sheets of colour, as on some Alpine slope; and not only must we search for our treasures, but we must know _where_ to search. They do not grow everywhere; much depends on the nature of the soil, much on the alt.i.tude, much on the configuration of the hills. There are great barren tracts which bear little but heather and bilberry; but there are rarer beds of volcanic ash and calcareous rock which are a joy to the heart of the flower-lover.[18]

[Footnote 18: See _The Flora of Carnarvons.h.i.+re_, by John E. Griffith, and _A Flora of the English Lake District_, by J. G. Baker, two books which are of great value in showing the localities of mountain plants.]

Again, one is apt to think that on those heights, where the winter is long and severe, it is the southern flanks that must be the haunt of the flowers; in reality, it is the north-east side that is the more favoured, owing to the fact that the hills, in both districts, for the most part rise gently from the south or the south-west, in gradual slopes that are usually dry and wind-swept, while northward and eastward they fall away steeply in broken and water-worn escarpments. It is here, among the wet ledges and rock-faces, constantly sprayed from the high cliffs above, where springs have their sources, that the right conditions of shade and moisture are attained; and here only can the Alpines be found in any abundance. The precipices of Cwm Idwal and Cwm Glas, in Wales, and in the Lake District the east face of Helvellyn, may stand as examples of such rock-gardens.

The course of a climber is usually along the top of the ridge, that of the botanist at its base; his paradise is that less frequented region which may be called the undercliff, where the ”screes” begin to break away from the overhanging precipice, and where, in the angle thus formed, there is often a little track which winds along the hillside, sometimes rising, sometimes falling, but always with the cliff above and the scree-slope below. Following this natural guidance he may scramble around the base of the rocks, or along their transverse ledges, and feast his eyes on the many mountain flowers that are within sight, if not within reach.