CHEVIOT 115 



From Lang'leeford, we "take the hill," and climb- 

 ing commences in earnest. At first the ascent is over 

 ordinary moorland, heathery slopes with scattered beds 

 of bracken now in its beautiful emerald stage. Close by, 

 spring three or four cheeping fledglings. They are 

 young grouse ; and, following their departure, ensues 

 a flutter and a scuffle among the heather. It is their 

 anxious mother, flapping along, wing-broken and disabled. 

 Admirably she feigns all this, at the moment when her 

 brood need the opportunity to make good their escape ; 

 not till all are safely out of sight, do the parents take 

 wing — the old cock had been crouching all this time 

 within a few yards. 



Leaving the gaunt cone of Hedgehope on the left, 

 presently the broad, flat summit of Cheviot comes into 

 view, though still far above. Gradually as one ascends, 

 the heather becomes scrubby and dwarfed, and mixed 

 with the golden fronds of blaeberry-ling, whortleberry 

 ( Vaccinium vitis-idcza), and creeping-heath. For the 

 last few hundred feet, so stunted is the vegetation as to 

 resemble a great soft mossy carpet, easy to the tread, 

 yet strewn broadcast with fragments of the dark grey 

 porphyry and dolerite that form Cheviot's plutonic 

 mass. 



The actual summit is a broad, desolate plateau, over 

 half-a-mile in extent, its surface but half clad with wiry 

 bents and cotton-grass, interspersed with moss-hags and 

 stagnant pools, oozy peat-flats and deep, black ravines. 

 The monotony of barrenness is relieved by the white 

 blossoms of the cloudberry {Rubus chczmimonis), a 

 mountain-plant that flourishes at altitudes of some 2000 

 feet. The fruit, which matures in August, resembles a 

 raspberry in form ; but is red at first, turning yellow 



