Part 11

After traversing the great heathery moors devoted to the cult of the grouse, and descending from the rocky rampart of gritstone known as Curbar Edge, one crosses the valley of the Derwent; and here a pause may be made to notice a patch of sweet Cicely, one of the loveliest of the umbelliferous tribe. It is a charming sight, as it stands up tall in the sunshine, with its soft feathery cream-white masses of foliage and its fernlike leaflets; too fair and fragile, it would seem, for human hands, for it droops very soon if cut. Every part of it--stalk, leaves, flowers, and fruit--has the same aromatic fragrance (its local name is "anise"), and so gracious is it to sight, scent, and touch, that one longs to bathe one's senses in its luxuriance.

Middleton Dale, naturally beautiful, but sadly deformed by lime-kilns, is famous for a cliff known as the Lover's Leap, from which an enamoured maiden is said to have thrown herself down. Had it been the love of flowers, rather than of man, that tempted her to that dizzy verge, there would have been no cause for surprise; for there are many alluring plants on the ledges of the scarp, including a brilliant show of wild wallflowers. In May and June there may be found along the northern side of the dale the yellow petals of the spring cinquefoil (potentilla verna), a gem of a flower, which, in Mr. Reginald Farrer's words, "clings to the white cliff-face, and from far off you see a splash of gold on the greyness." A month later the equally attractive Nottingham catch-fly (silene nutans) will be abundant on the rocks; a plant of nocturnal habits which expands its petals and becomes fragrant in the evening, but "nods," as its Latin name avows, in the daytime, when it wears a sleepy and somewhat dissipated look, like a wassailer--a white campion that has been "on spree." By night its beauty is beyond cavil.

On the lower slopes is a colony of a still stranger-looking flower, the woolly-headed thistle, whose involucre is so bulky, and its scales so densely wrapped in white down, that it has an almost grotesque appearance, as of a thistle with "swelled head." It is, however, a very handsome plant; and when growing in vast numbers, as I have seen it in one of its special haunts, near Wychwood Forest, in Oxfordshire, it makes a glorious spectacle.

Of the three species of saxifrages--the rue-leaved, the meadow, and the mossy--that thrive along the bottom of the dale, the two former are southern as well as northern flowers; but the presence of the mossy saxifrage is a sign that we are in a mountainous region, and as such it is always welcome. With these grows the graceful vernal sandwort, another flower of the hills, and so often the companion of saxifrages that it is naturally associated with them in the mind.

But Middleton Dale, the nearest to my starting-point, and therefore the most frequently visited by me, is much surpassed in floral wealth by the long valley of the Wye, which in its course from Buxton to Bakewell bears the names successively of Wye Dale, Chee Dale, Miller's Dale, and Monsal Dale. In one or another of these four glens nearly all the rarer limestone flowers have their station. You may find, for instance, three very local crucifers: the two whitlow-grasses, draba incana and draba muralis, remarkable only as being scarce in other parts of the kingdom; and the really beautiful little Hutchinsia, with its tiny white blossoms and finely cut pinnate leaves. Jacob's-ladder, a handsome blue flower, very uncommon in a wild state, is also native on the bluffs and slopes in Chee Dale and elsewhere: in fact a stroll along almost any of the limestone escarpments will bring new treasures to sight.

But the flower which I best love is one which grows by the streamside--in Wye Dale it is in profusion--the modest water-avens, often strangely undervalued by writers who describe it as "dingy." Thus in Delamer's The Flower Garden it is stated that this avens "is more remarkable for having been one of the favourites, the whims, the caprices of the great Linnaeus, than for anything else: it is hard to say what, in a British meadow-weed, could so take the fancy of the Master." Was ever such blindness of eye, such hardness of heart? And the wiseacre goes on to say that "it is impossible to account, logically, for attachments and sympathies."

Logic, truly, would be out of place in such a connection; but it is not difficult to understand Linnaeus's feelings towards the water-avens. There is a rare beauty in the droop of its bell-like head, and in its soft and subdued tints--the deep rufous brown of the long sepals, through which peep the silky petals in hues that range from creamy white to vinous red, and all steeped in a quiet radiance as of some old stained glass. I must own to thinking it the most tenderly beautiful of all English wildflowers. The hybrid between the water-avens and the common avens is occasionally found by the Wye: one which I saw in Miller's Dale had green sepals and petals of pale yellow.

The Alpine penny-cress (thlaspi alpestre), a crucifer native on limestone rocks, may be seen on the High Tor at Matlock, where it grows with the vernal sandwort on debris at the mouth of caves; a graceful little plant with white flowers and a smooth unbranched stem so closely clasped by the narrow leaves as to give it the look of a perfoliate.

One other limestone district shall be mentioned; the hills round Castleton. Cave Dale, approached by a narrow gorge close to the village, is well worth the flower-lover's attention; for bleak and bare as it is, its slippery sides harbour some interesting plants, such as the mountain rue (thalictrum minus), and the scurvy-grass (cochlearia alpina), both in considerable quantity. In the Winnatts, too, the steep ravine which overhangs the road from Castleton to Chapel-en-le-Frith, one may find Jacob's-ladder and other rarities on the rocks; and the gorgeous mountain pansy (viola lutea) is not far distant on the upland heaths and pastures.

The list is far from being exhausted; but enough has been said to show that there is no lack of entertainment among these limestone dales. To enter one of them, after crossing the moorland from the dreary coal district of east Derbyshire, is like stepping from penury to plenty, from wilderness to paradise: there is a change of colouring that instantly attracts the eye. Even in early spring the little shining crane's-bill decks the walls and lower rocks with its rose-petaled flowers; and at midsummer the more showy stonecrop flings a veritable cloth of gold over the crags and lawns. Few localities present so many charming flowers in so limited a space.

And now let us turn from the limestone valleys to those of the millstone grit.

The controversy as to which part of Derbyshire best deserves the name of "The Peak" has always seemed a vain one, not merely because there is no peak in the county at all, but because no connoisseur can doubt for a moment that the district which alone has the true characteristics of a mountain is the great triangular plateau of gritstone known as Kinderscout. Less beautiful than the limestone dales, with their beetling crags and wealth of flowers, the wilder region surrounding "the Scout" has the advantage of being a real bit of mountain scenery, topped as it is with black "tors" and "towers" that rise out of the heather, and flanked with rocky "edges" from which its steep "cloughs" descend into the valleys below.

Unfortunately, this great rocky tableland has of late years become almost a terra incognita to the nature-lover, as a result of the agreement which was made, after prolonged controversy, between the Peak District Society and the grouse-shooting landlords, inasmuch as, while permitting the traveller to skirt the shoulders of the hill, it excluded him wholly from its summit.

With the exception of the heather, the bilberry, and a few kindred species, the plants of the gritstone hills are sparse; but there is one, the cloudberry--so-called, according to Gerarde's rather magniloquent description, because "it groweth naturally upon the tops of high mountains ... where the clouds are lower than the tops of the same all winter long"--which well repays a pilgrimage. It is a prostrate and spineless bramble (rubus chamaemorus), highly valued in northern countries for its rich orange-coloured fruit. It grows thickly on the ground, making a dark-green patch in marked contrast to the coarse herbage; and towards the end of June one may see a profusion of the large white blossoms and a few early formed berries at the same time. There is a good-sized plot of it near the summit of the pass that crosses the shoulder of Kinderscout from Edale Head.

But of the plants that grow on the Scout itself I am unable to speak; for my only visit to it--not reckoning an unsuccessful attempt when I was turned back by a keeper--took place in the depth of a very snowy winter. It was on the afternoon of a frosty January day, when the sun was already low, that in the company of my friend Bertram Lloyd, and armed with a passport, in the form of a letter of permission, given us by the courtesy of one of the owners of the shooting, I climbed from Edale, through the region of right-of-way into that of flagrant trespass. We felt an unusual sense of legality, as we passed a weather-beaten notice-board, with a half-obliterated threat that trespassers would be "--cuted," whether executed, electrocuted, or prosecuted was left to the imagination of the offender; and I think the strangeness of his position was rather embarrassing to my companion, who is such a confirmed trespasser that he feels as if something must be amiss unless there is a gamekeeper to be reckoned with--like the mountain ram, in Thompson-Seton's story, who was so accustomed to be hunted that he became moody and restless when his pursuer was not in sight.

But, at the time of our visit, no passport was demanded; for the keepers, like the grouse themselves, appeared to have deserted the heights for the valleys. Indeed, hardly any life at all was to be seen, with the exception of a grey mountain hare, couched upon a stack of rock, who regarded us with a mild and curious eye as we passed some two hundred feet above him, and seemed to be satisfied that we were harmless. Nor was this lack of life surprising, for a more desolate scene could hardly be imagined--a great snow-clad "moss," intersected by deep ruts, which, being choked with snow, had somewhat of the appearance of crevasses, and punctuated here and there with the black masonry of the tors. From the highest point that we reached, marked in the ordnance map as 2,088 feet, there was a wonderful sunset view, though the Manchester district that lies to the west of the Scout was hidden in lurid fog. It is said that Snowdon, a hundred miles distant, has been seen from this point. It was certainly not visible upon the occasion to which I refer.

It is impossible to visit this high mountain plateau, lying as it does at about an equal distance from Manchester and Sheffield, without feeling that what is now a private grouse-moor must, before many years have passed, become a nationalized park or "reservation"--a playground for the dwellers in the great Midland cities, and a sanctuary for wild animals and plants.

The time will assuredly come when the sport of the few will have to give way to the health and recreation of the many.

NO THOROUGHFARE!

Trespassers will be prosecuted.

THE subject of trespassing mentioned in the preceding chapter, has a very close and personal interest for the adventurous flower-lover; for of all incentives to ignore the familiar notice-board with its hackneyed words of warning, none perhaps is more potent than the possibility that some rare and long-sought wildflower is to be found on the forbidden land. The appeal is one that no explorer can resist. If "stout Cortez" himself, when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific, had seen that ocean labelled as "strictly private and preserved," could he have desisted from his quest?

There is moreover a good deal to be said in extenuation of trespassing as a summer recreation; and if landlords go on at their present rate, in closing footpaths and excluding the public from green fields and hedgerows, trespassing will perhaps establish itself as one of our recognized national diversions. Hitherto, it must be confessed, it has remained to some extent in disrepute; doubtless, through its being so largely indulged in by poachers and other evil-doers, who have given a bad name to a practice which in itself is innocent and blameless enough. Most people, especially landlords and gamekeepers, have a fixed belief that a trespasser's purpose must be a lawless and mischievous one. Why so? Is it not possible that some trespassers may have other objects than to steal pheasants' eggs or snare rabbits? If huntsmen when following the hounds are permitted, not only to trespass, but to damage crops and fences, why should the naturalist be molested when harmlessly following his own inclinations in choice of a country ramble. Is the pursuit of the fox a surer proof of honest intentions than the pursuit of natural history? It appears that some landowners think so. "Trespassers will be prosecuted," say the notices that everywhere stare us in the face.

Was there ever such a lying legend? Trespassers will not be prosecuted, for the sufficient reason that in English law trespassing is not an offence. Of course, if any injury be done to property, the owner can sue for damages, but a harmless trespasser can only be requested to depart, though, if he be ill-advised enough to refuse to go, he may be forcibly ejected. We see, therefore, that the threatened "prosecution" of trespassers is in reality merely a brutum fulmen launched by landlords at a too credulous public, a pious fraud which has been far more efficacious than such kindred notices as "Beware the dog," or "Beware the bull," though these, too, have done good service in their time. Trespassers will not be prosecuted, provided that they do no sort of damage, and that if their presence is objected to they politely retire. With these slight precautions and limitations, a trespasser may go where he will, and enjoy the study of Nature in her most secluded and "strictly private" recesses. He thus himself becomes, in one sense, a lord of the soil; but his domain is far more extensive and unencumbered than that of any actual landlord. He enjoys all that is best in park, woodland, or mountain; and if he is "warned off" one estate he can afford to smile at the prohibition, since many other regions are open to him, and he can confidently look forward to a visit to fresh woods and pastures new on the morrow.

In the course of these rambles the trespasser will probably, like Ulysses, have some curious experiences of men and of notice-boards. It is very instructive to observe the various types of the landlord class, and their different methods of treating the intruder whom they meet on their fields. There is the indignant landlord, who can scarcely conceal his wrath at the astounding audacity of one who is deliberately crossing his land without having come "on business." There is the despairing landlord, who has been so broken by previous invasions that he is now content with a shrug of the shoulders and a remark that the place is "quite private, you know." There is the courteous landlord, who politely assumes that you have lost your way, and naively offers to conduct you to the high-road by the shortest cut; and there is the mildly ironical, who, as in a case which I remember on a Surrey hillside, remarks as he passes you: "There goes my heather."

I have heard it said that one can sometimes divine the character of a landlord from the wording of his notice-boards, and I believe from my own experiences that there is truth in the idea. Certainly the notice-board is the landlord's favourite method of defending the privacy of his estate, and for obvious reasons; for not only is it the least troublesome and expensive way of conveying the desired warning to would-be trespassers, but the salutary fiction regarding the "prosecution" of offenders is thus publicly and permanently impressed on the agricultural mind. There is not such entire uniformity in the wording of notice-boards as might be supposed. Of course by far the commonest form is the well-known "No thoroughfare. Trespassers will be prosecuted as the law directs," in which the unconscious irony contained in the last four words has always struck me as especially delightful. To this is often added the words "and all dogs shot," in which the experienced trespasser will detect signs of a certain roughness and inhumanity of temperament on the part of the owner. More original forms of expression are by no means uncommon. Sometimes the warning is emphasized by the bold statement, indicating the possession by the landlord of humorous or imaginative faculties, that "the police have orders to watch." Sometimes, but more rarely, the personal element is boldly introduced, as in the assertion, which might formerly be seen on a notice-board in one of the most beautiful valleys of the Lake District, "This is my land. Trespassers, etc." In some cases the wording has evidently been left to the care of subordinates, and hence result some curiosities of literary composition. "Private. Beware of dogs," is an instance of this kind, in which the ambiguity of the allusion to dogs, whether those of the landlord or the trespasser, seems almost oracular. In these and other ways a certain zest is lent to the excursions or rather the incursions, of the trespasser, which lifts them above the level of ordinary walking exercise.

In the case of wealthy landowners, the duty of warning off the trespasser devolves on gamekeepers, who, being less emotional than their employers, are a far less interesting study. Stolid and furry, and apparently endowed with only the animal instincts of the victims whom they delight in tracking and trapping, they are by far the least intelligent people whom the trespasser encounters; they are, in fact, no better than breathing and walking notice-boards, with the disadvantage that they cannot be so absolutely disregarded. It is unwise to argue with them; for reason is at a discount in such encounters and there is the possibility, in some districts, of their having recourse to personal violence, in the knowledge that if the matter should come before local magistrates the keeper's word would be honoured in preference to that of the trespasser. There is a sanctity in the word "Preserve."

An experience of this sort actually befell a friend of mine, who himself narrated it in print. A devoted botanist and nature-lover, he was twice in the same day found trespassing by a gigantic gamekeeper, who, on the second occasion, ended all parley in the manner described in the following "Mystical Ballad," wherein the writer has ventured somewhat to idealize the circumstances, though the story is based on the facts.

PRESERVED.