THE MOUNTAIN CHARM 



A famous writer of the eighteenth century 

 declared that to a civilised mind the moun- 

 tain solitude was naturally abhorrent. To be 

 impressed was unavoidable, he allowed ; to 

 love barrenness and the wilderness, to take 

 delight in shadow and silence, to find peace 

 in loneliness, was unnatural. It is humanity 

 that redeems nature, he added in effect. The 

 opinion is not one commonly held now, or not 

 admitted. But many hold it who would not 

 admit that they so felt or thought. I have 

 often asked summer wanderers if they have 

 no wish to see the solitudes in early spring, 

 when the ptarmigan's wing begins to brown ; 

 in November, when the rust of the bracken 

 can loom through the hill-mist like the bronze 

 shields of the sleeping Fianna ; in December, 

 when the polar wind frays the peaks into 

 columns of smoke, the loose, dry snow on the 



13 



