But of all the treasures of the hillside the brightest and purest are its water springs, sources of those many Welsh “afons,” and English “gills” and “becks,” whose beauty might convince the most hardened and sceptical of town-dwellers that the Naiads were something more than a dream. Follow one of these swift mountain rivers, such as the Cumbrian Esk or the Cambrian Llugwy, or better still, perhaps, one of the lesser and more headlong freshets, from its deep pools and rock-basins in the lower valley to its birthplace under the heights, and you will marvel at the prodigality of its charms--so deliciously do the waves come dancing and singing down the slopes in a succession of hidden falls, no two of which are alike, or in an open cascade of white foam, such as often wins for such streams in the Lake District the name of “Sour Milk Gill”; and at last, as the current dwindles, you will trace it to some brimming tarn, or to its high fount in green mosses among the rocks, or will possibly lose it underground, where it may be heard bubbling and gurgling below the stones in its invisible cradle.
These becks, it must be remembered, unlike the turbid snow-fed torrents of Switzerland, are as clear as crystal, so that in calm weather you may see every pebble at the bottom of the pools, and the trout poised with waving fins; but after a heavy rainfall, when the streams are in “spate,” it is often no easy matter to ford them, for then the merest runnels, across which you step to-day without hindrance, may to-morrow be a raging flood. On the other hand, there are times, though much less frequent, when the smaller streamlets are withered up under a spell of summer heat, and their dry channels are useful only as a stone staircase for the climber, who in such seasons may become acquainted, as never before, with the feeling of thirst. I think the sorest temptation I ever underwent, without succumbing to it, was when, on my first visit to Scafell Pike with two fellow undergraduates, on a burning August day, we found a jug of claret-cup left to keep cool, in the spring above Esk Hause, by a party which had trustfully preceded us to the summit. It must have been owing to some morally bracing influence in the high mountain air that that cup was untouched by us: had we been subjected to the same ordeal on the banks of the Cam, it seems but too certain that not one drop could have been spared.
