If one stays in this mountainous region, there are new and exciting walks available for every day. There are gloomy recesses in the hillsides that encourage exploration from the knowledge that they are not tripper-worn, and there are endless heights to be climbed that are equally free from the smallest traces of desecrating mankind. Rare flowers, ferns, and mosses flourish in these inaccessible solitudes, and will continue to do so, on account of the dangers that lurk in their fastnesses, and also from the fact that their value is nothing to any but those who are glad to leave them growing where they are. You can look down into shadowy chasms in the limestone, where underground waters fall splashing with a hollow sound upon black shimmering rocks far below, or, stranger still, into subterranean pools from which the waters overflow into yet greater depths. You can follow the mountain streams through wooded ravines, and discover cascades and waterfalls that do not appear in any maps, and you may leave them by the rough tracks that climb the hillsides when you, perchance, have a longing for space and the sparkling clearness of the moorland air. WENSLEYDALE CHAPTER IV WENSLEYDALE The approach from Muker to the upper part of Wensleydale is by a mountain road that can claim a grandeur which, to those who have never explored the dales, might almost seem impossible. I have called it a road, but it is, perhaps, questionable whether this is not too high-sounding a term for a track so invariably covered with large loose stones and furrowed with water-courses. At its highest point the road goes through the Butter-tubs Pass, taking the traveller to the edge of the pot-holes that have given their name to this thrilling way through the mountain ridge dividing the Swale from the Ure.