250 
NATURE NOTES. 
told me that he would go a bit with me to show the best way. 
This he did most considerately, showing me how to learn from 
a distance the soft places, of which there were several very 
bad ones, giving me much valuable knowledge about the moor- 
lands and mosses, and sending me on my way, in the next 
county, rejoicing and successful. 
The knowledge that I then acquired stood me in good stead in 
many a moorland walk. Not long after, when I was walking from 
Hawes to the top of Ingleborough, on going up the steep north- 
western shoulder of the mountain I found a party on the 
summit who had lunched there and had just set off to walk 
to the station at Clapham. Taking the very route that my 
Yorkshire friend would have warned me to avoid, I could see, 
as I sat down on the top, that they got, by and by, into his 
“ soft places,” from which they had scarcely extricated them- 
selves when I walked past them, on my way towards Faraday’s 
birthplace, on soft, dry turf, quite comfortably. The persistent 
inquisitiveness of the people it took me long to get used to. 
Once I was rather perplexed by a couple of tall Yorkshiremen, 
who came from a group of workmen that were engaged in 
making a big reservoir among the rainy and elevated moorlands, 
to tell me that they had a bet about me, and to ask if I would 
tell them who I was and what I did up there. I had walked 
about on these lofty moors pretty much, and one party had, 
I was told, maintained that I was the Milnsbridge parson, 
while the other party betted that I was “ not a bit of a parson,” 
so one from each side had come for me to settle the bet. Though 
this seemed to me rather an odd proceeding, I settled the bet ; 
and on asking the losers why they took me for the parson, and 
the winners why they thought me “ nowt of a parson,” as they 
phrased it, the explanations of both were very racy indeed. 
A Yorkshire lady, who had done much hard walking over 
Alpine passes, was desirous to see some of this upland scenery in 
her native district ; and, as she wore strong boots, as all good 
walkers do, I undertook to be her guide to what I deemed the 
fine moorlands where these workmen were making the big reser- 
voir. So we went there, walked all along the very rough em- 
bankment, went therefrom to the top of a high hill above, from 
which there was a glorious view, and thence along the edge of 
a moorland escarpment that might have been, in earlier geologic 
ages, the shore of some primeval bay, over rough ground, and 
quite in sight of the workmen all the time. And when, a week 
later, 1 walked past them, as they were seated at their dinner, 
they accosted me, in a very free and good-humoured style, 
saying, “ That were a gran’ lass that came up with you the 
other day, and, my word, she can walk,” to which another man 
added, in quite a Yorkshire style, “Eh, she can that;” which 
was their invariable form of emphasizing an assertion. 
By degrees as I became used to their brustjueness, I got to 
recognize in the people a genuine courtesy of the truest kind 
