Gents Mag 1900 part 1 p.441

---

	introduction, lists
	list, 1st qtr 20th century
	previous page next page
	Gentleman's Magazine 1900 part 1 p.441 type, with an unusually cramped defile at the foot. Right in front, as you cross the narrow switchback bridge from the cluster of ancient houses known as Sacgill (sic) and turn up the edge of the torrent, are Harter and Grey Crags, the abrupt front of the former continuing in Goat Scar, a pile of rough fox-haunted crags. Grey Crag is a pyramid of huge cliffs where the more daring dalesmen annually climb to the nests of hawks accused of harassing the sheep. Carrion-feeders these undoubtedly are, but hardly guilty of this heinous crime. As the walk is proceeded with, a curious depression in the dale-head is reached - a flat entirely covered with stones, which at some distant time had evidently been a tarn. Portions of this level are still banked up to make pools for sheep washing, and a strong wall has been built across at the foot to prevent loose debris washing at flood time upon the cultivated valley below. At the head of the depression comes our ghyll. At first the usual succession of small cataracts, each with its clear pool where the water swirls awhile ere escaping down the water-worn green slabs which constitute the steep river bed. The path, or rather the sheep track, which serves this purpose, becomes steeper, and the falls correspondingly higher. You rise from the valley in a succession of mighty steps; the shelf on which you are standing prevents your seeing the route by which you came, giving in return a distant view of the valley shimmering in the bright sunshine, with still further, range after range of moorish hills, with here and there a rough cliff, till the distant sea closes the view. You are now in the very jaws of the pass; a spur of Goat Scar approaches the stream from the left, and a tall corner of Gray Crag forces itself into the narrowing glen opposite. Now the more immediate river banks rise higher, the rolling waters in front come by a swiftly descending curve. At this point we climb round the foot of the rocky bank, here some fifty feet high, and find a standing place on a small beach. This is the only place in the rock basin where such a foothold is possible. Behind us the crags rise, covered with tiny clumps of mountain sage and fringed at their tops with waving bracken fronds. Beyond, higher and higher rise the stony ridges to the crags, which strike the eye in whichever direction it is turned. The beck tumbles into the small cleft, and as yet its unbroken descent is out of sight, but the soft, liquid, churning sound betrays its presence. As other venues fail us, a tough scramble up the grass hung bank commences. From the bank of the gorge are several grand vertical views through luxuriant mountain ashes of the stream dimpling in the deep crevice, and then of the waterfall, with its brink twenty feet
	next page
	gazetteer links
	-- Sprint, River

Lakes Guides menu.

---