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Page 59:-
see when he gets there and steps into the field on the left,
to look abroad from the brow. He then passes under its old
trees to where the voice of falling waters calls him onward.
Scandale Beck comes tumbling down its rocky channel, close
at hand. He must cross the bridge, and follow the cart-road,
which brings him out at once upon the fells. What he has to
aim at is the ridge above Rydal forest or park, from whence
his way is plain,- round the whole cul-de-sac of
Fairfield, to Nab Scar. He sees it all; and the only thing
is to do it: and we know of no obstacle to his doing it,
unless it be the stone wall which divides the Scandale from
the Rydal side of the ridge. These stone walls are an
inconvenience to pedestrians, and a great blemish in the
eyes of strangers. In the first place, however, it is to be
said that an open way is almost invariably left, up every
mountain, if the rover can but find it; and, in the next
place, the ugliness of these climbing fences disappears
marvellously when the stranger learns how they came there.-
In the old times, when there were wolves, and when the
abbots of the surrounding Norman monasteries encouraged
their tenants to approach nearer and nearer to the Saxon
fastnesses, the shepherds were allowed to inclose crofts
about their hillside huts, for the sake of browsing their
flocks on the sprouts of the ash and holly with which the
hillsides were then wooded, and of protecting the sheep from
the wolves which haunted the thickets. The inclosures
certainly spread up the mountain sides, at this day, to a
height where they would not be seen if ancient custom had
not drawn the lines which are thus preserved; and it
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