' His imagination
pictures Pen-y-ghent and Ingleborough as great peaks, seldom free from
a mantle of clouds, for are they not called 'mountains of the Pennine
Range,' and do they not appear in almost as large type in the school
geography as Snowdon and Ben Nevis? But as the scholar grows older and
more able to travel, so does the Pennine Range recede from his vision,
until it becomes almost as remote as those crater-strewn mountains in
the Moon which have a name so similar.
This elusiveness on the part of a natural feature so essentially static
as a mountain range is attributable to the total disregard of the name
of this particular chain of hills. In the same way as the term 'Cumbrian
Hills' is exchanged for the popular 'Lake District,' so is a large
section of the Pennine Range paradoxically known as the 'Yorkshire
Dales.'
It is because the hills are so big that the valleys are deep and it is
owing to the great watersheds that these long and narrow dales are
beautified by some of the most copious and picturesque rivers in
England. In spite of this, however, when one climbs any of the fells
over 2,000 feet, and looks over the mountainous ridges on every side,
one sees, as a rule, no peak or isolated height of any description to
attract one's attention.
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