2 8o CLIMBING IN ENGLAND 



to the devotee of climbing. Old-fashioned cragsmen, 

 who, unlike the modern school, risked their necks with 

 a purpose, if only for the very inadequate one of 

 gathering sea-fowls* eggs, or taking a falcon's or raven's 

 eyrie, chose an exactly opposite method of attack to 

 that now in favour. They accepted the fact that it is 

 usually easier to reach the juts and ledges of a cliff 

 from the top than from the bottom, and that 

 scrambling about on slippery chalk or treacherous lime- 

 stone was quite dangerous enough for glory, if the rope 

 were made fast to a crowbar above, and not to the 

 waists of a line of climbers tied together like bits of 

 paper on the tail of a kite. Of course, these men 

 sometimes grew over-confident, and paid the penalty 

 with their lives ; but the margin of safety is usually 

 ample, and there is no reason why the particular crags- 

 man who has taken the young ravens from the Culver 

 Cliffs, in the Isle of Wight, for the last seven years, 

 should not do so till he is too stiff to climb. But the 

 modern athlete prefers to treat the cliffs as training- 

 grounds for practising manoeuvres likely to be useful in 

 recognized mountaineering. The use of the rope is 

 not discountenanced, but only in Alpine form, as a link 

 between the climbers. Some of the directions for the 

 " use of cliffs " seem horribly dangerous ; and the art of 

 climbing is considered so entirely an end in itself, that 

 the precipices are merely mentioned in the terms of the 

 material for the exercise of a fine art, chalk being 

 described rather quaintly as a " treacherous and difficult 

 medium, and one which is likely to lead those practising 



