14 
LAND & WATER 
Jonathan 
By William T. Palmer 
October 25, 191 7 
R, 
ECRUITING work is always gnm (]ne.^. 7;^*^^ 
register may be. as this of mine, crowded w » f-" f J' 
neighbours: acquaintances. The casualty I'^t^ are 
^ J^Suy making th^c survey of Army Book 414 an added 
^V S(. many of the boys have 'gone W est Here is an 
^ winch, arouses -mc.K^of^;^.er^^ay._J«na^ 
Sr in France at' Sdonikf, in Egypt cjr in Mesopotamia 
f he I not shinning the peaks of the Tyro with gum^ 
comrades). Pen in hand I pause and recall him. Below 
st^rs the sergeant is wearily explainmg some point about 
ree mental posting, allowances, leave, medica examination. 
Sablv a score^ of recruits put the question yesterday, 
and to morrow a fresh score wUl demand the same informd- 
tion There is a faint rustle of feet across the parade, a sleepy 
calling from the jackdaws who, despite the state of war, 
hailK ancient fortress. There is the click of a typewriter 
a p! mse half heard as a door opens and shuts My eyes urn 
eastward. Outside the castle wall is a fringe of lofty poplars, 
and behind them a dream of distant, grey hills. Tjiey are 
not interesting hills but mere hummocks of grass, yet to-day 
thev sei-ve to remind me strongly of Jonathan. 
the ink of that entry is ancient. Jonathan passed beyond 
the Recruiting Oflice long ago. Every memory of him is 
linked with the fells. One sees again the buttress of clean 
sound rock. One threads again the line of ledges, steep 
cullies narrow cleavages, exposed terraces and sensational 
traverses and comes to that well-renowned point where the 
course gives out against a square block tilted to a slight over- 
hang Beneath this corner the rock face curves inward 
iiixina an airy sort of feeling. It's no place for the weak of 
nerve Assault after assault at that twenty-foot corner 
had failed. The ledge disappears to nothingness ; so without 
a base there was no chance of a human ladder like that which 
conquered the sheer rock-wall on Lliwedd and made possible 
the first storming of Walker's Gully on the Pillar Rock. 
The walls were too obtuse for " backing up." Handholds 
there were none ; the rock seemed perfectly smooth. 
l-"ailure ! But not for Jonathan. Somehow he pulled his 
light form up the sheer crag, here welding his nailed boot-edge 
against some faint rugosity— no, friend Leo, it was not, as 
you state, balancing on a lichen or against a skin of moss- 
there clinging and hauling by some wee pit which gave 
warrantable hold for a linger-tip. It was- a fine bit of climb- 
ing by inspiration; and even now, when the secrets of the great 
rock face are fully known, few storm that problem in the 
direct line of its first conquest. 
A Daring Climb 
Here is another memory of a daring climb. In the heart 
of Scafcll is a tremendous rift, known to the elect as Moss 
Ghyll. The climbing of this begins curiously. It is a slant 
up a steep rock face, above which one burrows deep into the 
mountains, conquers cave-pitches and narrow clefts, to find 
the course peter out in a series of minor rents and rifts. 
One of these exits is famous for wet, unsound rock, for 
long runs on the rope, and up this Jonathan essayed to con- 
duct a willing novice. But the rope provided was a mere 
fag-end. and again and again the leader had to help his 
follower up to an inadequate resting place in order that he 
himself might, by means of a second run-out, reach the head 
of the pitch. It was a dare-devil experiment, entered into 
because the alternative was no climb at all. And this thu 
blood of youth could not tolerate. 
One is hurled back to the reality of things to-day by the 
distant wail of a bugle, the drum of feet beyond the build- 
ings. Probably it is Tommy's tea-time. The daws make 
a small flutter, theft subside into sleepy remonstrance. Up 
in the sunshine is the faint dragonfly of an aeroplane. Here 
is the nation's work. My brief respite has been well and 
truly earned, but for a moment more one's memory flings 
back through the lowland sunshine to the golden blaze of 
September among the fells. 
The air is full of gold and crimson ; the wastes of bracken 
are minting the bullion of their year. There are golden 
beds and fringes of parsley fern, a droughted stream yields 
silver and diamonds as it splashes down the rocky dale. 
Nearer one's feet is a fan of scree, a few tumbled boulders, and 
overhead is a great outcrop of rock. Here it is smooth, un- 
conquered, may be unconquerable ; there it is a broken 
rampart tufted with heather, and though steep easy of access. 
There is too a great slash, broken bv cross-terraces and 
chockstones.where a tough little course is possible for the chm- 
ber Up the slabs and into the gully, into the cave and out 
over the stones which block and overhang, up the narrow 
chimnev and along the slender ledge which gives access to a 
hieher "steeper, narrower pitch, the little party goes steadily 
,m After a tough struggle the climb " goes. To Jonathan 
it is not new. A January day of snow and mist and pelting 
rain had shown him the way to victory. 
Mountain Bivpuacs 
Memory ranges from the bivouac by a mountain tarn which 
in a nieht of rain flooded the tent to a calm night when after 
a long iourney, camp had to be fixed in darkness unrelieved 
bv the light of a single match. There were bivouacs too by 
Windswept cairns and in plantations where the cold night 
draughts trouble one but Httle. There were long trudges 
over dull passes and down stony glens in twilight, midnight 
and dawn— hard gruelling nights preceding keen, strenuous 
days among the rocks. One must have been keen in those 
days when the crags were thirty miles away and neither cycle 
nor motor lifted us on the way. 
Long before war-time Jonathan tutored us to the use ol 
a rubber ground sheet, to an eiderdown bag in lieu of blankets . 
and to the tent cloth pegged flat to keep oE the soaking 
rain When good heather was available, one could 
dispense with the ground sheet, and so come nearer the simplei 
life Scree we avoided ; bog we knew ; moss we hated ; boulder, 
we tolerate— but every one of the Old Gang has gone to 
Flanders to make acquaintance with the general cussedness 
of mud. 
***** 
The ground floor sergeant is arguing a point of officers' 
etiquette with his understudy. Their voices rise and fall, 
every word passing through my open windows. The assistant 
who "is a new army man, believes that any way it don't matter 
as there ain't half-a-dozen swords in the whole depot- 
castle and camp together. At my elbow the telephone 
whirrs, is attended to, and relapses into cheerful silence. I 
turn again to the open register and to that entry " Jonathan " 
in healthy ink before me. 
Jonathan went into queer quarters. One' has seen him 
scrambling, wriggling along a broken ledge behind a waterfall. 
And there was a day of exploration in an abandoned mine. 
The first gallery smelled like, and was, a fox's haunt, but these 
vermin did not go far into the blackness. A ledge a score 
yards witliin was almost the limit of their pad-prints. In 
one of the great chambers the way was broken by a mound of 
loose fragments ; surely it was ignorance that sent me up 
and over that pile. The danger was driven home by a collapse 
of rock while I was within, but the way of escape was not 
blocked. One had seen in a deep, ancient copper mine a 
corner of rock suspended on a timber prop so rotten with age 
and eaten through wtli the threads of fungi that the hand 
plunged deep into the mass with no more effort than forcing 
through a mass of soap suds. 
But this afternoon one wishes for memories of the open 
air. and not of groping through ancient mines and caverns. 
We were on an open pass looking down a famous Yorkshire 
dale. and later passed along beneath Lovely Seat until among a 
reef of flat rock one noticed a rough building, not unlike a 
beehive in shape, entered by a creepy-hole and with another 
hole just above for light and ventilation. The interior was 
plenteously strewn with rushes. It was not for some minutes 
that the object of this erection was clear. In these wild 
countrysides foxes are too plentiful, the hills are full of 
impregnable " earths." and the gun has to be used to keep 
down the marauders. Therefore, on selected" beats," little 
covers of this sort are built, and in evening twilight and at 
dawn marksmen wait their possible chance of a shot. 
I wonder, Jonathan, if in your bivouac, your hut or your 
dug-out, you ever talk of our marvellous quarters in the 
North Country — of Wasdalc surrounded by the fells, of farms 
on wind-swept moor, and of a tiny Yorkshire inn, where, on 
a quiet evening you used to say that you heard the rumble 
of underground waters. Though I am looking out into the 
blue haze of late afternoon, my mind is of that wonderful 
night of starlight when the black peaks crowded round and 
hushed to silence the breeze and the moorland rills. I 
wonder whether, when you come back, you wi'.l have the old 
zest for tlie crannies of the hills. I fear that I shall not ; 
those glorious rock clirnbs will speak too strongly of the men 
who have gone for ever. 
