Gents Mag 1900 part 1 p.437
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Gentleman's Magazine 1900 part 1 p.437
advance is at an end, retreat impossible, for there is not room on the narrow ledge in which to face about. There against the sky-line, forty feet up or more, is a splinter of hard rock which has presented more resistance to weather and water than the rest of the cliff. Follow its bold outline to the water where it forms a promontory between two minute bays. A tiny crack shows in the angle at the head of the cove, up which is the best way out, but there are five yards of mossy damp crag between you and that. Carefully the body is pressed against the slippery surface, and a sidle forwards commences, a notch, a microscopic chink affording precarious hold. The tiny bay is reached, and a few feet further is the crevice desired. An outcrop of felspar now forms a tiny escarpment above your head, and holding to this you drag along the sheer smooth breast of rock - your whole weight on your arms. If the ledge presents the slightest irregularity your fingers will fail to grasp it, and with a mighty splash you go into the dimpling pool. But the worst predicament is not eternal, and in ten seconds you have got into the cranny. After a short breather, up the chimney you struggle, wrist, forearm, thigh, and calf all working at their fullest power. A gathering light comes in from the left through the cleft between the aiguille and the cliff. A lightning flash, more powerful than wind or weather, has cracked the former in many places, making it dangerus to ascend. The platform behind, however, affords foot-hold, and you have another welcome rest. The road of the waterfall fills your ears, and you look through the gap at it. How curiously near it seems! - you can almost step into its creamy spout. Splash, splash, thud, crunch, splash, splash, thud, crunch, in wearying reiteration, comes up from the well below. Across the gulf a sheer cliff rises, lines and broken in its upper part as its twin on which you are clinging, but dropping, a broad smooth slab, into the whirlpool beneath. In other ghylls, the climbing is less severe - these are the pretty secluded glens by which the effluent of many a mountain tarn finds its way to the parent river. The first two miles of the one in mind are between bracken-covered slopes. Willows, mountain ashes, and hollies flourish, the clear water rushes down rock slides from pool to pool, but further up the scenery becomes wilder. The bed of the beck is strewn with large fragments of rock fallen from aloft, which are happily adapted to the many-shaped waterfalls displayed in the first short gully. There is some hazard in frequenting these places, as many a man has had proof. The shepherd has possibly seen the fall of an immense mass of rock into the shallow where a day or two previously his charge made halt to drink. I know one ghyll which |
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