The Call of the Wildflower Part 9

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 sunshine. 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 cushion 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 Carnarvonshire_, 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.

It is a fine sport, this flower-gazing; not only because all the plants are beautiful and many of them rare, but because it demands a certain skill to balance oneself on a steep declivity, while looking upward, through binoculars, at some attractive clump of purple saxifrage, or moss-campion, or thrift, or rose-root, or globe-flower, as the case may be.[19] To the veteran rambler especially, this flower-cult is congenial; for it supplies--I will not say an excuse for not going to the top, but a less severe and exacting diversion, which still takes him into the inmost solitudes of the mountain, and keeps him in unfailing touch with its character and genius.

[Footnote 19: In Parkinson's _Theatrum Botanic.u.m_ (1640) it is remarked of rose-root that it grows "oftentimes in the ruggiest places, and most dangerous of them, scarce accessible, and so steepe that they may soon tumble downe that doe not very warily looke to their footing."]

I have spoken of Snowdonia in the spring; let us view it now in the fulness of June or July, when its flora is at its richest. It is not till you have climbed to a height of about two thousand feet that the true joys of the mountains begin. At first, perhaps, as you follow the course of the stream you will see nothing more than a bunch of white scurvy-gra.s.s or a spray of golden-rod; but when you reach the region where the thin cascade comes sliding down over the moist rocks, and the topmost cliffs seem to impend, then you will have your reward, for you have entered into the kingdom of the Alpines.

Suppose, for example, that you stand at the foot of the narrow ridge of Crib-y-Ddysgl, a great precipice which overhangs the upper chambers of Cwm Glas on the northern side of Snowdon, with an escarpment formed of huge slabs of rock intersected by wet gullies, narrow niches, and transverse terraces of gra.s.s. Looking up, to where the Crib towers above, you will see a goodly array of plants. Thrift is there, in large clumps as handsome as on any sea-cliffs; rose-root, the big mountain-stonecrop; cushions of moss-campion, which bears the local name of "Snowdon pink"; lady's-mantle, intermixed with the reddening leaves of mountain-sorrel; Welsh poppy, not so common a flower in Wales as its name would suggest; and at least three kinds of beautiful white blossoms--the starry saxifrage, the mossy saxifrage, and the shapely little sandwort (_arenaria verna_), as fair as the saxifrages themselves, and what higher praise could be given? The flower-lover can scarcely hope for greater delight than that which the starry saxifrage will yield him. It has been well said that "one who has not seen it growing, say, in some rift of the rock exposed by the wearing of the mountain torrent, cannot imagine how lovely it is, or how fitly it is named. White and starry, and saxifrage--how charming must that which has three such names be!"[20]

[Footnote 20: _Wild Flowers of Scotland_, by J. H. Crawford.]

Another lofty rock-face, similar in its flora to that of Snowdon, is the precipice at the head of Cwm Idwal, near the point where it is broken by the famous chasm of the Devil's Kitchen. Hereabouts is the chief station of the _Lloydia_, or spiderwort, a rather rare and pretty Alpine, a delicate lily of the high rocks, bearing solitary white flowers veined with red, and a few exceedingly narrow leaves that resemble the legs of a spider. Unlike most mountain plants, it has a considerable local reputation; and during its short flowering season in June one may observe small parties of enthusiasts from Bangor or Carnarvon, diligently scanning the black cliffs above Llyn Idwal, in the hope of spying it. The place where I first saw the _Lloydia_ in blossom was Cwm Glas; but I had previously noticed its long thin leaves in two or three places around the Devil's Kitchen.

The haunts of the Alpine meadow-rue (_thalictrum alpinum_) are similar to those of the spiderwort; and a most elegant little plant it is, its gracefully drooping terminal cl.u.s.ter of small yellowish flowers being borne on a simple naked stem, whereas its less aristocratic relative, the smaller meadow-rue (_t. collinum_), which is much commoner on these rocks, is bushier and more branched. I had many disappointments, before I rightly apprehended the true Alpine species; once distinguished, it cannot again be mistaken.

It was to a chance meeting in Ogwen Cottage, at the foot of Cwm Idwal, with Dr. Lloyd Williams, a skilled botanist who had brought a party of friends to visit the home of the _Lloydia_, that I owed my introduction to another very beautiful inhabitant of those heights, the white mountain-avens, known to rock-gardeners as _dryas octopetala_. Happy is the flower-gazer who has looked on the galaxy, the "milky way," of those fair mountain nymphs--for the plant is in truth an oread rather than a dryad--where they shed their l.u.s.tre from certain favoured ledges in a spot which it is safer to leave unspecified. I must have pa.s.sed close to the place many scores of times, in the forty or more years during which I had known the mountain; yet never till then did I become aware of the treasure that was enshrined in it!

But of all the glories of Cwm Idwal--rarities apart--the greatest, when the summer is at its prime, is the array of globe-flowers. This splendid b.u.t.tercup usually haunts the banks of mountain streams, or the sides of damp woods, in the West country and the North; its range is given in the _Flora of the Lake District_ as not rising above nine hundred feet; but in Snowdonia, not content to dwell with its cousins the kingcups and spearworts in the upland valleys, it aspires to a far more romantic station, and is seen blooming in profusion at twice and almost three times that height on the most precipitous rock-ledges.[21] One may gaze by the hour, enraptured, and never weary of the sight.

[Footnote 21: In the Cairngorm mountains, the globe-flower ascends to a height of 3,000 feet (see Mr. Seton Gordon's _Wanderings of a Naturalist_); in the Alps to 8,000.]

I have by no means exhausted the list of notable Snowdonian flowers that are native in the two localities of which I have spoken, or in a few other spots that are similarly favoured by geological conditions: the sea-plantain, the mountain-cudweed, the stone-bramble, the queer little whitlow-gra.s.s with twisted pods (_draba incana_), its still rarer congener the Alpine rock-cress, and the _Saussurea_, or Alpine saw-wort--all these, and more, are to be found there by the pilgrim who devotedly searches the scriptures of the hills. But of the _Saussurea_ some mention will have to be made in the next chapter; for it is now time to turn from Cambria to c.u.mbria, from the "cwms" and "cribs" of Snowdon to the "coves" and "edges" of Helvellyn.

XXIV

COVES OF HELVELLYN

I climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn.

SCOTT.

SO far I have spoken more of the Welsh mountain flowers than of those belonging to Lakeland; but the difference between the two districts, in regard to their respective floras, is not very great, and with a few exceptions the plants that are native on the one range may be looked for on the other. The _Lloydia_ is found in Snowdonia only; and Wales can boast, not a monopoly, but a greater plenty of the moss-campion and the purple saxifrage. On the other hand, the Alpine lady's-mantle and the yellow mountain-saxifrage, both abundant in c.u.mberland, are absent from Carnarvonshire; and this is somewhat of a loss, for the common lady's-mantle, charming though it is, lacks the beauty of the Alpine, and the yellow saxifrages, as they hang from the rocks like a phalanx of tiny golden shields--each with bright petals and pale green sepals radiating from a central boss--are among the greatest ornaments of the fells.

Again, the lovely little bird's-eye primrose is a North-country plant which is not found in Wales; against which may be set, perhaps, that gem of the damp mosses on certain Welsh streamsides, the ivy-leaved bell-flower. More characteristic of Lakeland than of Snowdonia, though not peculiar to it, are those two very beautiful flowers, the one a child of the swamp, the other of the high pastures, the gra.s.s of Parna.s.sus, and the mountain-pansy; and to conclude the list, the snow-saxifrage and the mountain-avens are about equally rare in both countries--the avens, indeed, is confined to one or two stations, where fortunately it is little known.

Helvellyn, as a mountain, is very inferior to Snowdon, nor indeed can it compete in grandeur with its own c.u.mbrian neighbours, the Great Gable and Scafell; but among visitors to the Lakes it has nevertheless an enduring reputation, largely due to the poems in which Scott and Wordsworth have sung its praises. Accordingly, during the tourist season, the anxious question: "Is that Helvellyn?" may often be overheard; and on a fine day all sorts of incongruous persons may be seen making their way up the weary slopes that lead from Grasmere to its crest. I once observed a gentleman in a top-hat toiling upward in the queue; on another occasion I witnessed at the summit a violent quarrel between a married couple, the point of dispute (on which they appealed to me) being whether their little dog was, or was not, in danger of being blown over the cliffs. As the west wind was certainly very strong, and Helvellyn had already been a.s.sociated with the story of a dog's fidelity, I ventured to advise a retreat.

On the east side, however, where its "dark brow" overlooks the Red Tarn, and throws out two great lateral ridges--on the right, in De Quincey's words, "the awful curtain of rock called Striding Edge," and Swirrel Edge on the left--Helvellyn is a very fine mountain, and what is more to the present purpose, is botanically the most interesting of all the Lakeland fells. From Grisedale Tarn to Keppelcove, a distance of full three miles, that great escarpment, with the several "coves" that nestle beneath it, is the home of many rare Alpine flowers, corresponding in that respect with the Welsh rock-faces of Idwal and Cwm Glas; and though it does not offer so conspicuous a display, or such keen inducements to flower-gazing, a search along its narrow ledges, and under the impending crags, home of the hill fox, will seldom disappoint the adventurer.

Some years ago I spent a week of July, in two successive seasons, at Patterdale, for the purpose of becoming better acquainted with the mountain flowers, but on both occasions the weather was very stormy and made it difficult to be on the fells. At first I searched chiefly under Striding Edge and the steep front of Helvellyn, among the rocks that lie behind the Red Tarn, and in similar places above Keppelcove Tarn in the adjoining valley, hoping with good luck to light on the snow-saxifrage. In this I was unsuccessful; but I twice found a plant I had not hitherto met with--in appearance a small spineless thistle, with a cl.u.s.ter of light-purple scented flowers--which proved to be the Alpine saw-wort, or _Saussurea_, and which in later years I saw again on Snowdon. A blossom which I picked and kept for several months was so little affected by its separation from the parent stem that it continued its vital processes in a vase, and pa.s.sed from flowering to seeding without interruption. Like the orpine, it was a veritable "live-long,"

or as the politicians say, "die-hard."

At Patterdale I was so fortunate as to make the acquaintance of Mr.