374 ^ Veteran ' dimmer.' 



taught so many young ideas how to chmb — and after a season's 

 apprenticeship with him, went to Londesborough, Senr., com- 

 pleting with his uncle, Rd. Marr, the gang which climbed the 

 cliffs from Cat Nab to Scale Nab, including the famous Dor, 

 the same ground which he had climbed to the end of the 1909 

 season, and which, had he lived, he would no doubt have con- 

 tinued climbing till he was seventy, for, in spite of increasing 

 age and stiffness, the old man felt as much at ease on the rope 

 as ever. His greatest difficulty seemed to be getting over the 

 edge of the cliff — once on the swing, and he was perfectly at 

 home. The faculty of climbing had, in fact, become ingrained 

 in him, and had he been compelled to roll over the cliff edge, 

 it seems probable that he would have gone on with it, for when 

 twitted by" his friends with getting too old for the job, he always 

 cheerfully replied that ' he could climm best of owt.' His life 

 apart from climbing, consisted of the usual routine of an 

 agricultural village, and calls for no comment. It is in the 

 personalty of the man and his climbing experiences that our 

 interest lies. 



At sixty-three he was the oldest climber on the cliff, though 

 in length of service at the game, the veteran Ned Hodgson, who 

 gave up some ten years ago, could beat him. When he com- 

 menced, climbing was not the serious business that it is now, 

 there being insufficient eggs to make it worth w^hile gathering 

 them every day, and many off days were spent in working on 

 the land. The number of men in each gang was three, as 

 against the present four, and all the cliff was rent free, the men 

 arranging between themselves what ground each gang was to 

 work. No such thing as rent was ever known till the increase 

 of eggs, owing to the protection afforded by the Act of 1880, 

 gave some of the men an incentive to owst the older climbers 

 from part of their ground, and they went to the farmers and 

 offered to pay for the privilege of egg-gathering. The regula- 

 tion head-gear was a box-shaped top hat, known as a ' mullah,' 

 also fashionable for executions, both processes being intimately 

 connected with the use of the rope. The lowering was done by 

 running the rope over one thigh, not round the waist as now, 

 and the climber must have had much more work, as the lowering 

 man could not have had so much holding power, whilst long 

 hauls were brought up, and only two men were pulling at the 

 top against three now. One man named Coultas used to climb 

 the broken cliff between the Row! up and Dor by himself on 



Naturalist 



