116 MOUNTAINS. 



while its sister board at the other end of the 

 " truly forinidable clifif " bore the congratulatory 

 remark : — 



Now you're over, take another 

 Your drooping spirits to recover I 



wljich, if it is not very good rhyme, is, at least, 

 good evidence of the fear felt by our easy-going 

 ancestors for so slight a hill as Penmaenmawr, 

 only fifteen hundred feet above the sea-level, and 

 easily walked up by any ordinary modern pedes- 

 trian in any direction. 



The same childish dread of mountains or big 

 hills crops up everywhere in the books and letters 

 of all periods up to the very beginning of the 

 present century. Have we, then, become excep- 

 tionally brave, or were our predecessors all re- 

 markable cowards? Probably neither. The fact 

 is that our modern familiarity with mountain- 

 climbing, or, at least, with hills and downs, has 

 resulted partly from the increased ease of locomo- 

 tion, and partly from the growing sense of the 

 absolute necessity for physical exercise on the 

 part of the dwellers in great cities. A hundred 

 years ago most Englishmen lived and died in the 

 towns or villages where they were born or bred. 

 They seldom went away from home at all ; or, if 

 they travelled, it was mostly by the coach-road to 

 London, through the very flattest and easiest parts 



