front j^Lmblesttife. 125 



de-sac of Fairfield, to Nab Scar. He sees it all ; and the 

 only thing is to do it : and we know no obstacle to his doing 

 it, unless it be the stone wall which divides the Scandale 

 from the Rydal side of the ridge. These stone walls are an 

 inconvenience to pedestrians, and a great blemish in the eyes 

 of the stranger. In the first place, however, it is to be said 

 that an open place is almost invariably left, up every moun- 

 tain, the rover can but find it : in the next place, the ugliness 

 of these climbing fences disappears marvelously when the 

 stranger learns how they came there. In the olden times, 

 when there were wolves, and when the abbots of the sur- 

 rounding Norman monasteries encouraged their tenants to 

 approach nearer and nearer to the Saxon fastnesses, the shep- 

 herds were allowed to enclose crofts about their upland huts, 

 for the sake of browsing their flocks on the sprouts of the 

 ash and the holly, with which the uplands were then wooded, 

 and of protecting the sheep from the wolves which haunted 

 the thickets. The inclosures certainly spread up the moun- 

 tain-sides, at this day, to a height where they would not be 

 seen if ancient customs had not drawn the lines which are 

 thus preserved ; and it appears, from historical testimony, that 

 these fences existed before the fertile valleys were portioned 

 out among many holders. Higher and higher ran these in- 

 closures, — threading the woods, and joining on upon the 

 rocks. Now, the woods are for the most part gone ; and 

 the walls offend and perplex the stranger's eye and mind, 

 by their unsightliness and apparent uselessness ; but it is a 

 question whether, their origin once known, they would be 

 willingly parted with, — reminding us as they do of the times 

 when the tenants of the abbots or of the mihtary nobles, 

 formed a link between the new race of inhabitants and the 

 Saxon remnant of the old. One of these walls it is which 

 runs along the ridge which bounds Rydal Park. There may 



