THE DEFEATED ENNERDALE RAILWAY.
ALL lovers of English Lakeland and all believers in the need of keeping the few Dales left to us inviolate for the rest and pleasure of weary England will owe a debt of lasting grati- tude to the Select Committee appointed on the motion of Mr. Stafford Howard to inquire and report "whether the proposed Ennerdale Railway will interfere with the enjoyment of the public who annually visit the Lake District, by injuriously affecting the scenery in the neighbourhood, or otherwise," fcr the report against that railway which it adopted. Ennerdale is the most impressive of our Cambrian Valleys for simple and austere grandeur. What the spectator feels, as he looks at Honister Crag from Buttermere, he feels doubly, when —after a climb over the intervening mountain mass of Red Pike and Starling Dodd, and descending upon Ennerdale Water at Gillerthwaite Farm—he looks south-east up the green trough of the wild vale, and sees towering upward, cloud-capped, the gigantic, purple mass of the Pillar, Steeple, and Haystacks at the head of the vale; and watches the shining, serpent-like coils of the Liza run towards the pastures at the head of the Lake. Right opposite him, as he descends into the valley upon one of the only two farm-houses that exist in all the six miles of vale, he notes between the two ravines down which, from the skirts of the Haystacks, fall the cascades known as High Ghyll and Low Ghyll, that the hill-side has been hideously scarred in about twenty-four different places by the adventurers for whom powers have just been asked of Parliament to complete the destruction of the valley. He observes that the terminus of the proposed line was to have been a mile further down the valley, just at the bead of the lake ; and on inquiry learns that, once get the rail there, "They'll happen get leave to run it right oop ;" but that till then, the men who get the iron ore are intending to run it down by tram to the lake.
Entering Gillerthwaite Farm, he learns that the iron-ore royalties between High Ghyll and Low Ghyll are belonging to the Lowther family, but that there are said to be other iron veins worth working away up the beautiful ravine known as Silver Cove, in the hollow that divides Great Crag and Ern Crag from the Haystacks. The royalties here belong to William Tyson, the grand old yeoman who may be said to be King of Ennerdale. Listen to his wife, as she says, sadly enough, " Once let them ragabones and navvy folk come oop here away, Barn, we mun just leash house and be off !" It is evident that the chance of royalties does not outweigh in her mind the peace and quiet of the Dale. We leave the lonely mountain farm of Gillerthwaite, noisy enough and busy enough to-day, for it is sheep-shearing time, and pass along a good mountain road for about a mile, to the head of Ennerdale Water. On our right is the barrow or burying-ground of the Norse chieftain. Lathar,—Latter Barrow of to-day. And as we gaze north-west along the shining levels of the lake, it is easy to see that no choice was left the railway promoters as to which side of the lake they must run ; for, sheer down to the water's edge on the opposite or south-west side fall the brown, heath-covered masses of Crag Fell, Iforter Fell, Reveling Crag, with Angler Crag standing out a sole promontory into the water beneath it. Nor, pace Mr. Cavendish Bentinck, is it difficult to observe at a glance, that the masses, on this, the north - eastern shore, of Starling Dodd and Herd House, with their spurs of Latter Barrow and Bowness, come so closely to the lake, that the Ennerdale Water foreshore on this side is also very limited ; and that as the present carriage roadway for at least two-thirds of the distance down the lake is not more than thirty to forty yards away from the margin of the lake, so the projected line, which is to run parallel with it, will not be more than one hundred to two hundred yards distant from it over the same distance. How Parliament could ever have been expected to sanction the danger to horse and carriage traffic along this the only road up to Ennerdale, it is difficult to see. Walla cyclopean, or a formal belt of trees, as a protection between the echoing train and the roadway, if insisted on, would have been as great a blot in the scenery of the Ennerdale foreshore as anything that could have been devised to damage the vale.
We are now standing by the first foot-bridge over the River Liza, and at the proposed terminus. All the beauty of the river would have been doomed here to be given up to iron girders, and all the charm of the rugged pasture-land to the incidental waggon- standing ground and sidings of the iron-ore traffic. Any one who remembers the red mud, and ruddled appearance of Boot or Ravenglass Station, on the Eskdale Railway, will know what that means. But the mines are at least a mile and a half away. Trams were to be laid by the side of the Liza to fetch the trucks. Trains were again to go up yonder beautiful combe or hollow in the hills between Ern Crag and the Haystacks. For ore is re- ported to exist in the Deep Ghyll and also in Silver Cove ; and why should Deep Ghyll not have been mode to run loamy-red to join the discoloured Liza, and pour such a torrent of iron. washings into Ennerdale Water, as would have made it one great reach of red incarnadine, and plagued it with an Egyptian plague -of blood, only equalled by the colour of the River Ehen, as it flows by Cleator and Egremont to the sea P "Eh, Barn !" said a farmer with whom the present writer once spoke, "let t' Reale git here, and. it 'all goo reight thro' t' vale hooiver. There's a -canny bit o' slate at top, and a bit of lead in t' Pillar, so they -saay." The Whitehaven folk depended on Ennerdale to supply their water without lead or iron in it. If Ennerdale had been made the sport of mining experimenters, and the foxes, who con- eider the Todd Holes up in the Haystacks Mountain their strongest " beald " in this part of Cumberland, had been com- pelled to give place to human foxes of a more destructive order, great would have been the pity. Look up and count the red burrows of this latest fox, and see how even his preliminary workings have marred the vale.
We turn and pass down the vale, by the side of Ennerdale Water. On our left the lake, on our right the glorious crags of Herd House and Starling Dodd, and the flanks of Latter Barrow and Bowness Knott. One thing strikes us at once. The singular loveliness of the wild strip of land between lake and mountain. wall. And who that knows the beauty of that boulder-strewn, Serny foreshore, between the hills and the water's edge, but must -see the certain injury any railway line permitted would have in- flicted ? We have now in our walk towards the foot of Ennerdale Water reached a rising ground, that projects into the lake from the base of the beautiful Bowness Knott. The rail must here .either have made a deep cutting by the side of the road that climbs over the hill, or must have gone to the water's edge, and so round it; and either alternative would have disfigured the scene. Once round the Windsor Point (as this promontory is called), we find the hills recede, and a pleasant bit of farm-house-bedotted prospect reaches to the foot of the red-brown Herd House Heights, and Banna Fell. Yonder, away to the west, is How Hill; and there, by How Hall Farm, the steam-invader would first dare his intrusion into the Ennerdale sanctuary. As -one walked under the How Hill, by the wild roses and foxgloves, and flowery, bowery, half-wall, half-bank fences, that lie be- tween Anglers' Inn and Ennerdale Bridge, one felt it a pity that the holiday-makers should be whirled by all this beauty, in their haste to the foot of the lake, for that last mile and a half.
At Ennerdale Bridge lies the only population, some three 'hundred and fifty, that could, be said to be a community that sieeded railway accommodation at all. Beyond Ennerdale Bridge, in the lakeward direction, not more than twelve houses can be counted. 0 (these, ten at least lie in the little bay or natural recess between How Hill and the Bowness Knott, on the north -side and quite at the foot of the lake. It cannot be doubted that for the mining people of West Cumberland who need a holiday, and who now for want of direct railway accommodation to the nearest vales take train to Keswick, a railway that ran to Enner- dale Bridge village would be a convenience. One yard further that railway need not come ; unless the interests of the landlord of the Anglers' Inn and the greater convenience for the three or four farmers who live close by are thought to outweigh in import- ance the certain destruction of this the most impressive and romantically beautiftil vale of Cumberland, and all to please the whims of a parcel of speculators and the pockets of a few mining engineers, railway-making lawyers, and royalty-owners. Is there any belief in the progress of education ? Then one day the toiling masses who are digging coal and iron in West Cumberland will greatly appreciate the quiet and change of scene, and be impressed by the grandeur of Ennerdale. And Ennerdale is the nearest valley to those toiling masses that could be ever to them a holiday-ground. We are careful for the masses, in refusing to allow their re- creation-ground to be made impossible for them in the future.
Bat the public opinion that saved Borrodale was alive, and has now saved Ennerdale also. No doubt, owners of iron ore at this particular juncture are anxious to crowd out .of competition the Spanish ore which, through the temporarily low freightage, has found its way inconveniently into the English market. Parliament will doubtless give the commercial side a fair hearing, but Parliament has been wise in remembering that England's true wealth lies not in her mineral supply, so much as in her supply of healthy souls in healthy bodies. Parliament does not forget that the work of the world demands that there shall be rest-places for the weary workers. The Legislature has been most just in refusing to sanction the certain destruction of the Vale, because it is currently reported
that iron ore exists in an untried quantity somewhere on the slopes of Tewit Fell.
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