Where flowers are concerned, there is little truth in the saying that "comparisons are odious"; on the contrary it is both pleasant and profitable to compare not only plant with plant, but the flora of one fertile district with that of another. The natural scenery of Arnside is yet unspoilt, and for that reason it now offers greater attractions to the nature-lover than the ruined charms of Llandudno; but if he were asked, for botanical reasons only, to choose between a visit to the Orme and a visit to the Knott, the decision might be a less easy one. "How happy could I be with either!" would probably be his thought.
It [rose-root] groweth very plentifully in the north of England, especially in a place called Ingleborough Fels.
THERE is a tale by Herman Melville which deals with the strangeness of a first meeting between the inmates of two houses which face each other, far and high away, on opposite mountain ranges, and yet, though daily visible, have remained for years as mutually unknown as if they belonged to different worlds. It was with this story in my mind that I approached for the first time the moorland mass of Ingleborough, long familiar as seen from the Lake mountains, a square-topped height on the horizon to the south-east, but hitherto unvisited by me owing to the more imperious claims of the Great Gable and Scafell. But now, at last, I found myself on pilgrimage to Ingleborough; the impulse, long delayed, had seized me to stand on the summit of the Yorkshire fell, and, looking north-westward, to see the scene reversed.
Another of Ingleborough's attractions was that it is the home of certain scarce and beautiful flowers, as has been pointed out in Mr. Reginald Farrer's interesting books on Alpine plants. Such exceptional rarities as the baneberry (_actæa spicata_), which grows among rocky crevices high up on the fell--not to mention the _arenaria gothica_, choicest of the sandworts--the mere visitor can hardly hope to discover; but there are other and less infrequent treasures upon the hill, beyond which my ambition did not aspire.
As I ascended the barren marshy slopes that form the eastern flank, I realized once again how much more the labour of an ascent depends upon the character of the ground than upon the actual height to be scaled. Ingleborough is under 2,400 feet; yet it is far more toilsome to climb than many a rocky peak in Wales or Cumberland that rises hundreds of feet higher, and it is a relief at length to get a firm foothold on the rocks of millstone grit which form the summit. Thence, from the edges which drop sharply from the flat top, one looks out on the somewhat desolate fells stretching away on three sides--Pen-y-ghent to the east, Whernside to the north, and to the south the more distant forest of Pendle--but westward there is the gleam of sand or water in Morecambe Bay, and the eye hastens to greet the dim but ever glorious forms of the Lakeland mountains.