from Keswick with a rucksack on my back, a
Baddeley in my pocket, and a companion by my side. I like a companion when
I go a-walking. "Give me a companion by the way," said Sterne, "if it be
only to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines." That is about
enough. You do not want a talkative person. Walking is an occupation in
itself. You may give yourself up to chatter at the beginning, but when you
are warmed to the job you are disposed to silence, drop perhaps one behind
the other, and reserve your talk for the inn table and the after-supper
pipe. An occasional joke, an occasional stave of song, a necessary
consultation over the map--that is enough for the way.

At the head of the Lake we got in a boat and rowed across Derwentwater to
the tiny bay at the foot of Catbells. There we landed, shouldered our
burdens, and set out over the mountains and the passes, and for a week we
enjoyed the richest solitude this country can offer. We followed no
cut-and-dried programme. I love to draw up programmes for a walking tour,
but I love still better to break them. For one of the joys of walking is
the sense of freedom it gives you. You are tied to no time-table, the slave
of no road, the tributary of no man. If you like the road you follow it; if
you choose the pass that is yours also; if your fancy (and your wind) is
for the mountain tops, then over Great Gable and Scawfell, Robinson and
Helvellyn be your way. Every short cut is for you, and every track is the
path of adventure. The stream that tumbles down the mountain side is your
wine cup. You kneel on the boulders, bend your head, and take such draughts
as only the healthy thirst of the mountains can give. And then, on your way
again singing:--

Bed in the bush with the stars to see.
Bread I dip in the river--
There's the life for a man like me.
There's the life for ever.

What liberty is there like this? You have cut your moorings from the world,
you are far from telegraphs and newspapers and all the frenzies of the life
you have left behind you, you are alone with the lonely hills and the wide
sky and the elemental things that have been from the beginning and will
outlast all the tortured drama of men. The very sounds of life--the whistle
of the curlew, the bleating of the mountain sheep--add to the sense of
primeval solitude. To these sounds the crags have echoed for a thousand and
ten thousand years; to these sounds and to the rushing of the