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"Lucy is clever and steady on the ice; I'd had some practice on Scawfell in winter when I was at home, and though Walters didn't know much about the work his nerve is good. At length, we resolved to try the sharp peak yonder." It was nearly dark, but Foster, looking up the valley, saw a white summit gleam against the sky.
We shall not find Gaspard there to-night Gaspard, the gay and intrepid guide from the Dauphiné, beloved of all who know the lonely inn at Wastdale. He is away on the battle-field fighting a sterner foe than the rocks and precipices of Great Gable and Scawfell.
Scawfell and Skiddaw and Helvellyn had given him his first boyish interest in climbing; the Colorado and Canadian Rockies had claimed one holiday after another of maturer years, but the summit of Rainier had been the greatest height he had ever reached.
At one point, where the huge rock wall towers up from the ghastly depth of a broad ravine, there is a lateral ridge not unlike the Mickeldore of Scawfell Pikes running right across the valley, and connecting Appenfell with Bardlyn, another hill of much lower elevation, towards which this ridge runs down with a long but gradual slope.
Nay, with a storm for variety; clouds from the top of Scawfell falling thick about us; a fierce wind shrieking across the tarn; sheets and torrents and floods of rain beating upon our roof; and you and I by the peat-fire. With a good supply of books, old and new, I can picture it for three months, for half a year! 'Be on your guard. Remember "that kind of man". 'I am in no danger.
Then I could read all its agony, all its torture of apprehension: and in spite of my friend's letters, and the dulness of my days, I was almost happy. The summer was deepening, the glow of the roses flushed the garden ways, the skies were clear above Scawfell, when the end at last drew near. My grandmother's face was now scarcely recognizable. The eyes were sunk deep in her head.
Only two days of abiding sunshine; for the rest, mere fitful gleams across a sky heaped with stormclouds. Over Wastdale hung a black canopy; from Scawfell came mutterings of thunder; and on the last night of the week when Monica fled from her home in pelting rain tempest broke upon the mountains and the sea.
From the Scawfell and Buttermere group on its western verge, to the Ullswater mountains on the east; from Skiddaw and Blencathra on the north, southward through all the shoulders and edges, the tarns and ghylls of the Helvellyn range; through the craggy fells of Thirlmere, Watendlath, Easedale; over the high plateaus that run up to the Pikes, and fall in precipice to Stickle Tarn; through the wild clefts and corries of Bowfell, the Crinkles, Wetherlam and the Old Man; over the desolate backs and ridges that stretch from Kirkstone to Kentmere and Long Sleddale, the great man-hunt passed, enlisting ever fresh feet, and fresh eyes in its service.
It is therefore essential to select a dog and bitch of a large strain to obtain large Mastiffs. It is not so necessary that the dogs themselves should be so large as that they come from a large strain. The weight of a full-grown dog should be anything over 160 lb. Many have turned over the scale at 180 lb. The Shah, for instance, was 182 lb. in weight, Scawfell over 200 lb.
And soon I saw the intention of this: for just here the cliff's lip was cleft by a fissure very like that in Scawfell which we were used to call the Lord's Rake, only narrower that ran back into the field and shelved out gently at the top, so that a man might easily scramble some way down it, tho' how far I could not then tell. And 'twas from this fissure that the glow came.
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