Page:The English Peasant.djvu/113

 Up against the wall was a row of old china, which would have rejoiced the heart of a collector. He was a musician as well, and possessed both a dulcimer and a harmonium. Just behind his cottage is a fine waterfall called Cataract Force, caused by the Swale forcing its way through the limestone, and pouring down over a number of ledges, some hundred feet in width, in a series of foaming falls.

But to return to the pastor of Keld and its Literary Institute. The example thus set in the most remote corner of the dale spread, and now there is scarcely a village in Swaledale without its literary institute.

We may judge that all this outward fruit could not have ripened if there had not been earnest and constant endeavour in a more private way. Not only were there the regular Sunday ministrations, with six or eight miles to traverse betwixt the two chapels of Keld and Thwaite, but pastoral visits in winter-time, which were still more formidable undertakings. They were generally announced beforehand from the pulpit, and when the day arrived a little company would sally forth with their pastor, clad weather-proof, and, carrying lanterns and sticks, cross the trackless snow of the moor, leaping the frozen becks, to visit some lonely farm lying far away among the hills, and which but for such visits would be cut off from human sympathy for weeks together.

The people here at the head of the dale are mainly shepherd farmers, working themselves, assisted perhaps by a couple of men who live in the house, and eat and drink with them. If these men get married, they live out of the house, and receive about twelve or thirteen shillings a week. But they generally wait until they have saved a little money, and can take a small farm and begin on their own account. This is not difficult to do, as every householder has a right of pasturage for his cattle and sheep on the moors from the 29th of May until winter. During winter the cattle are shut up in the cow-byres and fed upon hay, but the poor sheep have to do the best they can on the moor. This is a hard time for the shepherds, as the roads get snowed up, and the sheep in danger of being lost. However, they collect them in little places of refuge, resembling the Northumbrian "stells." Often the boys have to go out on the moor with great bundles of hay on their heads to feed the sheep.