moody shadows over the swardy dale, which below Thwaite expands, showing
Muker two miles off, the largest village of Upper Swaledale. Soon,
climbing, I could look down upon miles of Swaledale and the hills
beyond, a rustic panorama of glens and grass, river and cloudshadow, and
there was something of lightness in my step that fair day, for I had
left all my maps and things, except one, at Reeth, to which I meant to
return, and the earth, which is very good, was--mine. The ascent was
rough, and also long: but if I paused and looked behind--I saw, I saw.
Man's notion of a Heaven, a Paradise, reserved for the spirits of the
good, clearly arose from impressions which the earth made upon his mind:
for no Paradise can be fairer than this; just as his notion of a Hell
arose from the squalid mess into which his own foolish habits of thought
and action turned this Paradise. At least, so it struck me then: and,
thinking it, there was a hiss in my breath, as I went up into what more
and more acquired the character of a mountain pass, with points of
almost Alpine savagery: for after I had skirted the edge of a deep glen
on the left, the slopes changed in character, heather was on the
mountain-sides, a fretting beck sent up its noise, then screes, and
scars, and a considerable waterfall, and a landscape of crags; and
lastly a broad and rather desolate summit, palpably nearer the clouds.

* * * * *

Two days later I was at the mines: and here I first saw that wide-spread
scene of horror with which I have since become familiar. The story of
six out of ten of them all is the same, and short: selfish 'owners,' an
ousted world, an easy bombardment, and the destruction of all concerned,
before the arrival of the cloud in many cases. About some of the Durham
pit-mouths I have been given the impression that the human race lay
collected there; and that the notion of hiding himself in a mine must