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It is equally true of the North; the whole chain of the Pennines between the two main lines of travel to the east and to the west of them is utterly deserted. A man may walk thirty times in a year from Hawes to Ribble Head and in not half those walks meet or speak to a man. This is true of the great high road across the chain, of the summits it is far truer. Go from Appleby over Cross Fell up Wild Boar Scar and down the water to Alston, and you will be as completely cut off from men the whole day long as you could be in the West of Canada. The same is true of the dales of Cheviot. From where Chevy Chase was fought all the way up Rededale is a fine great road that was once the highway to Scotland over Carter Fell. If a man goes lame upon the English side of it he cannot count upon getting a lift to Jedburgh; he must limp it all the way. And speaking of that road reminds one that not only has this novel isolation come upon a great part of Britain, but that as one watches it with a sense that is not wholly pleasurable (especially on winter evenings, after a day bereft of human intercourse) one has often around one evidences of a recent time when the activities of the country were more evenly spread. Upon this same great road from Carter Fell there is upon the Scotch side of the path a house which once paid a high rental and did great trade with the traffic. It is in ruins. Upon that same Cross Fell which is now completely alone, you come perpetually upon abandoned workings, upon bits of hardened road, now half sunk into the bog, and even upon the remains of broken bridges over streams.

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