I’m not a climber, not a climber,
    Not a climber now,
    My weight is going fourteen stone—­
    I’m not a climber now.

We shall not find Gaspard there to-night—­Gaspard, the gay and intrepid guide from the Dauphine, beloved of all who know the lonely inn at Wastdale.  He is away on the battle-field fighting a sterner foe than the rocks and precipices of Great Gable and Scawfell.  But Old Joe, the shepherd, will be there—­Old Joe, who has never been in a train or seen a town and whose special glory is that he can pull uglier faces than any man in Cumberland.  He will not pull them for anybody—­only when he is in a good humour and for his cronies in the back parlour.  To-night, perchance, we shall see his eyes roll as he roars out the chorus of “D’ye ken John Peel?” Yes, Wastdale shall be to-night’s halt.  And so over Black Sail, and down the rough mountain side to the inn whose white-washed walls hail us from afar out of the gathering shadows of the valley.

To-morrow?  Well, to-morrow shall be as to-day.  We will shoulder our rucksacks early, and be early on the mountains, for the first maxim in going a journey is the early start.  Have the whip-hand of the day, and then you may loiter as you choose.  If it is hot, you may bathe in the chill waters of those tarns that lie bare to the eye of heaven in the hollows of the hills—­tarns with names of beauty and waters of such crystal purity as Killarney knows not.  And at night we will come through the clouds down the wild course of Rosset Ghyll and sup and sleep in the hotel hard by Dungeon Ghyll, or, perchance, having the day well in hand, we will push on by Blea Tarn and Yewdale to Coniston, or by Easedale Tarn to Grasmere, and so to the Swan at the foot of Dunmail Raise.  For we must call at the Swan.  Was it not the Swan that Wordsworth’s “Waggoner” so triumphantly passed?  Was it not the Swan to which Sir Walter Scott used to go for his beer when he was staying with Wordsworth at Rydal Water?  And behind the Swan is there not that fold in the hills where Wordsworth’s “Michael” built, or tried to build, his sheepfold?  Yes, we will stay at the Swan whatever befalls.

And so the jolly days go by, some wet, some fine, some a mixture of both, but all delightful, and we forget the day of the week, know no news except the changes in the weather and the track over the mountains, meet none of our kind except a rare vagabond like ourselves—­with rope across his shoulder if he is a rock-man, with rucksack on back if he is a tourist—­and with no goal save some far-off valley inn where we shall renew our strength and where the morrow’s uprising to deeds shall be sweet.

I started to write in praise of walking, and I find I have written in praise of Lakeland.  But indeed the two chants of praise are a single harmony, for I have written in vain if I have not shown that the way to see the most exquisite cabinet of beauties in this land is by the humble path of the pedestrian.  He who rides through Lakeland knows nothing of its secrets, has tasted of none of its magic.