Back Aa

Call of the Wildflower

Close

<h2>XVII</h2> <h3>ON PILGRIMAGE TO INGLEBOROUGH</h3> <blockquote> It [rose-root] groweth very plentifully in the north of England, especially in a place called Ingleborough Fels. Gerarde. </blockquote> 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 Scafell. 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. Another of Ingleborough's attractions was that[Pg 129] it is the home of certain scarce and beautiful flowers, as has been pointed out in Mr. Reginald Farrer's interesting books on Alpine plants. Such exceptional rarities as the baneberry (actæa spicata), which grows among rocky crevices high up on the fell—not to mention the arenaria gothica, choicest of the sandworts—the mere visitor can hardly hope to discover; but there are other and less infrequent treasures upon the hill, beyond which my ambition did not aspire. As I ascended the barren marshy slopes that form the eastern flank, I realized 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 Lakeland mountains. In the affections of the mountain-lover Ingleborough can never be the rival of one of these; indeed,[Pg 130] 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. Still, 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 topmost 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 plateaux 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. But to return to the flowers. At the summit were mossy saxifrage and vernal sandwort; and on the cliffs just below, to the western side, the big mountain stonecrop, rose-root, not unhandsome with its yellow blossoms, flourished in some abundance, even as it did when Gerarde wrote of it, nearly three hundred years ago. The purple saxifrage, an early spring flower, is also found on these rocks, but at the time when I visited the spot, in late June, its blossoming season was over, and nothing[Pg 131] was visible but the leaves. There was little else but some hawkweeds; I turned my attention, therefore, to the flowers of the lower slopes. 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. 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. But with the bird's-eye primrose tinging hillsides and hollows with its tender hue of pink, no other companionship was needed. A mountain flower, it is the fairest of all the Primulaceæ, that band of fair sisters to which it belongs—primrose, cowslip, pimpernel, loosestrife, and money-wort—all beautiful and all favourites among young and old alike, whereever there is a love of flowers. It was worth while to make the pilgrimage to Ingleborough, if only[Pg 132] to see this charming little plant in perfection on its native banks. Nor were other flowers lacking; the wild geraniums especially were in force. The shining crane's-bill gleamed on the pale limestone ledges; the wood crane's-bill, a local North-country species, gave a glint of purple in the copses at the foot of the fell; and still further down, below the village of Clapham, there were masses of the blue meadow crane's-bill (geranium pratense), the largest and not least handsome of the family. The water-avens was everywhere by the stream sides; and on a bank above the road the gladdon, or purple iris, was opening its dull-tinted flowers.[Pg 133] <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2