Chapter III: Part 3

Our road, still climbing, turns to the right in Capel Curig and takes us up into the heart of the hills, through a scene of splendid desolation--bare heights, huge boulders tossed and heaped upon the ground, jagged outlines, and dark sullen colours--a land that was vastly disconcerting to those travellers of an earlier day whose idea of beauty was “a smiling landscape.” As we reach the summit and see the waters of Llyn Ogwen below us, sapphire-blue or lead-grey according to circumstances, the great sides of Tryfaen and the Glydyrs tower on the left. Beyond the lake Alla Wen rises steeply. “A horrid spot of hills,” says a seventeenth-century writer. “The most dreadful horse-path in Wales,” says Pennant; and that indeed it may well have been before Telford came here to perform his miracles of engineering. “The district through which the surveys were carried is mountainous,” he says quietly; “and I found the existing roads very imperfect.” When we have passed Llyn Ogwen, and the cottage where food is to be had if necessary, and the sudden turning over the bridge, and are swinging down the gentle slope of Nant Ffrancon high up on the mountain-side, we must surely give nearly as much admiration to this road which descends for ten miles with no steeper gradient than 1 in 15 as we give to the wide Valley of the Beavers below us. Above us the mountain is a mass of grey boulders, of scars and landslips; below us it sweeps down precipitously to where the little Ogwen dances like a streak of quicksilver. Presently we pass under the hideous excrescence of the Penrhyn slate quarries, grey terraces of rubbish contrasting cruelly with the glowing gorse of the opposite slopes; and then through the equally hideous town of slate, Bethesda, the miners’ town, whose slate walls, slate steps, and slate porches are enough, as Dr. Johnson, would say, “to make a man hang himself.” Let us hurry on into the Cochwillan Woods.

Very soon after passing the modern towers of Penrhyn Castle we reach the town of Bangor, “which for the beauty of its situation, was called Ban-cor, the high or conspicuous choir.” It is not a very inviting place, nevertheless, and there is no need to pause here, for even the cathedral is not beautiful. It has had a great deal to bear; for it was burnt by Harold the Saxon, and again by King John, and again by Owen Glyndwr; and no doubt the castle built by Hugh, Earl of Chester, suffered on one or all of these occasions, for Camden says, “though he made diligent inquiry he could not discover the least footsteps” of it. The original cathedral was founded by St. Deiniol in the sixth century, and beneath it is buried the great Welsh prince Owen Gwynedd, hero of many battles, who fought here on the heights above the straits a fight so desperate that “the Menai could not ebb on account of the torrent of blood which flowed into it.” Before we go on to Carnarvon we must cross those straits, for the sake of the bridge, and of the view, and of Beaumaris.

It was in the year 1826 that the mail-coach, swaying under its burden of excited officials, rolled slowly for the first time over the Menai Bridge. It was a brave scene. Telford, in his modest way, had pleaded against a formal procession, but he could not check personal enthusiasm nor prevent the mustering of that long, long line of carriages and horsemen and thousands on foot, which followed the Royal London and Holyhead Mail, amid the fluttering of flags and the firing of guns, and the roaring of a gale. Nor yet could he control the shouts that rose above the wind when he himself passed by in an inconspicuous carriage.

As soon as we reach the sacred shore of Mona, the last home of the Druids, we turn sharply to the right; unless, indeed, we have a mind to pursue the Holyhead road for a couple of miles, for the pleasure of telling our friends that we have seen Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerchwryndrobwllantysiliogogogoch. I once heard a rumour that this place was to be connected by rail with Pontrhydfendigaedmynachlogfawr, but as the scheme may come to nothing perhaps it would be wiser not to mention it.

From the shore road to Beaumaris we see the whole grand panorama of the Gwynedd mountains, height beyond height and range beyond range, from the pale distant peak of Snowdon to the dark shadows of steep Penmaenmawr. It is a scene that has a quality of strangeness in it. One looks at it from the outside, as it were; for Anglesey, which once was green with the sacred groves of the Druids, is now, as it was in the days of Giraldus Cambrensis, “an arid and stony land, rough and unpleasant in its appearance.” One feels, on this flat shore, worlds away from that beautiful country beyond the strait. On a day of sunshine and cloud, when the mountains are glowing with every imaginable colour and seem every moment to be changing their shapes under the moving shadows, it is worth driving many a mile to sit on the beach of Beaumaris.

Behind us, close at hand, is Beaumaris Castle; opposite to us, across the water, is “Aber of the white shells,” where Llewelyn the Great held his Court, and where his English wife died; and a little further along the Anglesey shore to our left is Llanfaes, where he buried her “with dire lamentation and no little honour,” and built over her grave a monastery that was altogether destroyed by Henry IV. Poor Joan’s coffin must have been through many changes before the sad day when it occurred to some thrifty farmer that the queer old stone trough would do finely for his cattle to drink out of. It was fortunately discovered early in the last century, and another watering-trough having been found for the cows, it was placed in safety in the garden at Baron Hill.

Beaumaris Castle does not make so brave a show as most of Edward’s fortresses; but its ten low towers and its double line of defence were no doubt formidable enough before their thick drapery of ivy gave them so soft an air. The rusty iron rings that hang on the outer wall give one of those little touches of the commonplace that bring the past so near. Edward I. cut a canal and filled the moat of Beaumaris Castle from the sea, and so the ships that brought supplies to the garrison were moored and unladed at the very walls.

The shores of the Menai have seen a vast amount of fighting of a very desperate kind, from the days when the Druids stood at bay here to the time when Edward I. bridged the strait with boats and was badly beaten by the last Llewelyn. And as we re-cross the bridge and look down at the ancient little church of Llandysilio so far below us, we may remember another scene--peaceful in itself but not unconnected with bloodshed--when on a hill near here, Archbishop Baldwin and that delightful chronicler Giraldus induced many persons, by persuasive discourses, to “take the cross.”

From the other side of the Menai, on the Carnarvon road, the view is, of course, comparatively tame; but we have only eight miles to travel before reaching Carnarvon, and on a level road they are soon disposed of.

It is difficult to realise at the first moment that the well-preserved, clean walls upon which one comes so suddenly in the middle of Carnarvon were raised by Edward I.; though that king himself stands above the gateway, with his hand on the sword that worked so hard. This is the greatest of his castles; he chose it for the birthplace of his son, and chose it too, apparently, to be the monument and symbol of himself. Nothing could be a more fitting emblem of the unyielding strength of the king who built castles in Wales almost as profusely as other men build them in Spain. On this, the town side of it, one is more struck with its strength than with its beauty. To see it at its best one must cross the bridge, and from the other side of the river-mouth look at the huge bulk of it; the long line of the curtain-wall reflected in the water; the great octagonal towers, with their clusters of slender turrets; the unutterable repellent air of it. There are no windows in these cold walls; no ivy or very little, to soften their austerity. Even from this side, though the water and the shipping give it picturesque surroundings, I think Carnarvon Castle is not beautiful so much as impressive. When Queen Eleanor entered it through the gate still called the Queen’s she did not see it as it stands now, for it was finished by her son, who was born in the castle soon after her arrival. A little room in the Eagle Tower is shown as his birthplace; but those who have read the local records declare it to be proved beyond doubt that the tower was without a roof till the baby in question, Edward II., put a roof on it himself.

It is surprisingly well preserved. This, no doubt, is partly because it has never been overcome by any more destructive agent than the starvation of its garrison. Glyndwr besieged it on its landward side, and his French allies attacked it from the sea; but they made little impression upon it, and finally, since time was precious, they thought it wiser to employ their engines elsewhere more profitably, though the garrison within numbered only twenty-eight men, in sore want of provisions.

Between Carnarvon and the Pass of Llanberis lie ten miles of undulating country. But the mountains are towering before us like an impassable wall, growing ever higher and more formidable as we pass Llyn Padarn and Llanberis town, whence the mountain-railway starts for the summit of Snowdon. No doubt the northern shores of Llyn Padarn and of Llyn Peris, which lies beyond it, were once beautiful; but they are now merely a mass of unsightly débris, mountains of broken slate, terrace above terrace of melancholy grey. The southern shore of Llyn Peris, however, at the very foot of the Pass, has kept its own wild beauty, and on a craggy little hill that rises at the lower end “there is yet a pece of a toure,” as Leland says. A very notable piece of a tower it is too; for Dolbadarn was the very centre and heart and ultimate citadel of Welsh freedom from the earliest days. Here Llewelyn, the third and last, kept his brother a prisoner for twenty-three years, and here Owen Glyndwr hid himself whenever it suited him to elude the English, who invariably lost their way among these mountains. It was here, too, that Owen hid his chief enemy, Lord Grey of Ruthin, who had embroiled him with the King of England and caused all the trouble. But this little square grey “pece of a toure” is far older, they say, than Owen or Llewelyn. It is supposed to have been built by Maelgwyn, the same prince who built that first castle at Deganwy which was rebuilt by Robert of Rhuddlan and King John at such large cost to themselves. Maelgwyn, King of Gwynedd in the sixth century, is one of the forceful characters who stand out here and there conspicuously in the rather bewildering host of Cymric princes; a personable man, according to all accounts, and one of great courage and success in battle, yet not without leanings towards the monastic life. He actually became a monk for a time; but no one can have been greatly surprised when he tired of the constraint and took to soldiering again. On the whole I fear he was a truculent creature, for Taliesin, “chief of the bards of the West,” proclaimed, with the ambiguity common to prophets, that--

“A most strange creature should come from the sea-marsh of Rhianedd
As a punishment of iniquity on Maelgwn Gywnedd,
His hair, his teeth, and his eyes being as gold.”

And Maelgwyn died of the yellow plague.

It is only a little way beyond this point that the actual Pass of Llanberis begins to rise, cleaving its straight course between the mountains to the very foot of Snowdon--“to the Welsh always the hill of hills,” as Borrow says. The highest peak, Y Wyddfa, is not visible from the Pass, but one sharp-edged shoulder in certain lights seems to be within a stone’s-throw of the road. This is the steepest of the three passes near Snowdon, and the one whose name is best known to the world in general. As for beauty--the most beautiful of the three is the one on whose royal blues and imperial purples one’s eyes are actually feasting at the moment. But I would say this: to understand even the elements of the beauty of these hills it is imperative to travel _up_ each of the three passes, for as one climbs up into the heart of the mountains the effect is in every case more beautiful than on the downward journey. On a continuous tour this is of course impossible; and that is one reason why the best way of seeing Snowdonia is to stay for a few days at a centre, such as Bettws, or Capel Curig, or Pen-y-Gwryd.

At one or other of the two latter places it will probably be necessary to spend a night after this run from Bettws to Bangor and Carnarvon. Capel Curig has the finer view, and a hotel that has overlooked Llyn Mymbyr and faced the peaks of Snowdon for many a year. I do not know if it is the same that Sir Walter Scott stayed in and Lockhart described as “a pretty little inn in a most picturesque situation certainly, and as to the matter of toasted cheese, quite exquisite”; but it is without doubt the same that seemed to George Borrow “a very magnificent edifice.” He dined here, he tells us, “in a grand saloon amidst a great deal of fashionable company,” who “surveyed him with looks of the most supercilious disdain.” I strongly suspect that both the fashion and the disdain existed only in a sensitive imagination.

Pen-y-Gwryd is exactly at the junction of the Pass of Llanberis with Nant Gwynant, the valley down which our future course lies; and here too there is a comfortable inn, with memories of Charles Kingsley and the author of “Tom Brown’s Schooldays.” From this point we can start off in the morning without retracing a step.

As one glides down the perfect gradient of this entrancing valley of the Glaslyn, with the very blue waters of Llyn Gwynant glittering below and the sides of Snowdon rising precipitously from the shore on the right, and on the left the wild green slopes climbing up and up from the roadside to the sky, one comes after all to a decision as to the comparative beauty of these passes. Nant Gwynant is the best. The hill is three miles and a half long, and in some places just steep enough to force us to slacken speed and so make the most of our surroundings; then a few miles of undulating road lead past Llyn Dinas and, still by the side of the stony Glaslyn, into the village of Bedd Gelert, which has won fame on false grounds as the burial-place of Llewelyn’s hound. The rough, pathetic tomb, that stands in a meadow and is reached by a path made by the feet of thousands of pilgrims, has a most plausible appearance; but it was, I believe, raised by the forethought of a hotel-keeper--a man who apparently knew his world. No bones of a faithful dog lie here; but if we may not weep over the dust of Gelert we may at all events mourn the loss of a beautiful, but dead, legend. We drive through the village and enter, almost at once, the Pass of Aberglaslyn. The steep part of the road is quite short; but this strange cleft in the rock, this narrow ravine that holds only the river and the road between its cliffs, forms an imposing southern gate to the Snowdon mountains. We pass out of it almost suddenly into the wide, level meadowland of the Traeth Mawr--and may the gorse be in its full glory at the time!

This plain that we are swinging across so happily, this plain of green and gold, was a barren marsh, useless to man or beast, till it was reclaimed in the early part of last century by a certain Mr. Maddox, who gave his name to the two towns that own their existence to him--Portmadoc and Tremadoc. At Tremadoc lived Percy and Harriet Shelley for a little time, while they were still happy. The poet, with characteristic enthusiasm, was fascinated by the great draining-scheme; and in his leisure moments grounded poor Harriet in Latin.

It is here or at Portmadoc that we turn to the right, if we are minded, to explore the little-known peninsula of Lleyn. For some mysterious reason the greater part of this promontory is seldom visited, though it is not by any means without attractions. It cannot, of course, compare in any respect with the dramatic grandeur of the Snowdon country; there are large tracts that might even be called uninteresting; but from the southern uplands the panorama of the mountains of Gwynedd is really magnificent, and on the northern coast the fine outline of Yr Eifl--ridiculously corrupted into the Rivals--rises very grandly from the sea. And when the gorse is in blossom the whole country is veined with gold, for here they make their hedges of gorse, and the air is heavy with its poignant sweetness.

As for the roads, they are mostly good. The roads from Pwllheli to Nevin, to Yr Eifl and Clynnogfawr, and to Aberdaron are all excellent; so also is the one that connects Nevin with Aberdaron; but the “Saints’ Road to Bardsey” from Nevin to Llanaellraiarn should be avoided, since the saints, apparently, employed indifferent engineers.

To reach Pwllheli from Portmadoc we must past through Criccieth, one of the most popular places on this coast, and one that must have been really beautiful before its popularity spoilt it. It has a nice hotel, and is, in any case, a far more attractive stopping-place than the ambitious Pwllheli. The castle, not without dignity, stands aloof upon its abrupt round promontory, facing the rows of modern lodging-house as though they were some new kind of enemy drawn up against it. For that Edwardian gateway has faced many enemies, and the castle still more. Of its original founding I believe nothing is certainly known, but it is older than its gateway, for Llewelyn the Great chose it for the prison of his unruly son, Gryffydd, of whom it was said that “peace was not to be looked for in his neighbourhood.” But, indeed, in those times a strong prison seems to have been the only way of securing peace in any one’s neighbourhood.

Much the most picturesque person who has ever been connected with Criccieth was Sir Howel y Fwyall, or _of the Axe_. So doughty were his deeds at Poictiers that the Black Prince not only did him honour in the usual ways, with money and knighthood, but gave orders that the pole-axe with which he had done so valiantly should be set up in this castle of Criccieth--of which Howel was Constable--and should be served with a mess of meat daily. Eight yeoman were entrusted with this service, and after the ceremony the meat was given to the poor. The custom was kept up till the reign of Elizabeth.

The name of Pwllheli is well known, if ill-pronounced, in the world of tourists. It aspires to be a fashionable watering-place, and one feels that success may possibly crown its endeavours, when one considers the natural disadvantages of Rhyl and Borth and many another prosperous spot.

A few years ago we should have been obliged, having once passed Criccieth, to spend the night at Pwllheli; but now we shall do well if we rather choose Nevin for our stopping-place. A nice new hotel has been built there--a hotel with no foolish pretensions, but evidently with every intention of gradually becoming a thoroughly comfortable abiding-place for golfers who like quietness. The little town lies close under the shelter of the hills, and between it and the sea is the flat land of the Morfa Nevin, where Edward I. gathered all the chivalry of England and many a foreign noble to celebrate his conquest of Wales in a great tournament.

Nevin is threatened with the railway, which, if it actually approaches the place, will certainly spoil it; but it will be long, I imagine, before any intrusion of that kind disturbs the peace or injures the beauty of little Aberdaron. It is an elect spot, this End of the World in Wales; more remote, less visited than St. David’s, and infinitely less famous; yet once trodden, like St. David’s, by the weary feet of countless pilgrims. For just beyond that low headland on our right is sacred Bardsey, the Island of the Saints, where lies the dust of twenty thousand holy men. St. Mary’s Abbey, of which some fragments still are left, was founded in such early days that Dubritius, who crowned King Arthur and then resigned the See of Caerleon to St. David, came to end his day in this remote monastery; and so holy was the soil at last that every monk in Wales crossed this dangerous channel to kneel upon it. It was here, from these wide, white sands of Aberdaron, that they embarked, half trembling, half inspired--white-robed Cistercians and sombre Benedictines--and here, in this little church between the hills and the sea, that they spent the night on their knees before braving dangers that were not by any means imaginary. The building has been re-roofed and much restored, but these are the very walls within which the pilgrims prayed, the very walls that once gave sanctuary to any man, innocent or guilty, who sought their shelter. The blind wall on the north bears witness to the early British origin of the church.

And we must not forget, as we stand thinking of the pilgrim monks on the shore, that this sheltered, isolated corner, hidden closely by the hills on the one side and protected by the long headlands on the other, was once visited by secular history. Into this bay sailed Hotspur’s father, the base Northumberland, from France, and from Harlech came Owen Glyndwr and Edmund Mortimer; and here in the house of the lord of Aberdaron they swore to be thenceforward “bound by the bond of a true league and true friendship and sure and good union,” and to act in all ways as became “good true and faithful friends to good true and faithful friends.”

The fascinations of the Bay of Aberdaron, however, must not blind us to the fact that the finest scenery in the Peninsula, of Lleyn, is in the north. From Pwllheli we should drive across to Llanaellraiarn under the great brow of Yr Eifl, and then, turning to the right, follow the road between the wild, craggy hills and the sea to Clynnogfawr. Here lived and died the great St. Beuno, and the church that bears his name is of a size and importance quite unusual in so tiny a place: “almost as bigge as St. Davides,” says Leland. This large church only dates from the fifteenth century, but the little chapel where St. Beuno is buried is connected with it by a covered way, and was founded by the saint himself in the seventh century. His tomb was still to be seen in Pennant’s day, and had the gift of working miracles, but now both monument and miracles are no more. In the larger church is carefully preserved a strange old chest that is said to have belonged to St. Beuno.

To reach the Traeth Mawr from Clynnog our best way is to go on to Pont-y-Croes, then strike across to Pen-y-Groes, and thence descend to Tremadoc. There is not much to be said in favour of this road’s surface, but the beauty of it increases every moment, and for the last few miles, as we drop gently down on to that plain of gorse that lies like a sheet of flame between two ranges of purple mountains, we have as fine a sight above, below, and before us as any we shall find in Wales. A few minutes later we are in Portmadoc, and from the long embankment there look up the valley of the Glaslyn across the Traeth Mawr to that gate of Gwynedd through which we came a little while ago.

Presently we cross the estuary of the river Dwryd by a toll-bridge. I think this river-bank must be the scene of a touching incident described by Giraldus. He and his Archbishop, recruiting for the Crusades, were met “at the passage of a bridge” between the Traeth Mawr and Llanbedr near Harlech by Meredyth ap Conan, a prince of this country. He brought with him a large suite, and then and there by the river-side the Archbishop preached to them, and “many persons were signed with the Cross.” Among these ardent souls was a personal friend of the young prince. Meredyth, seated higher on the bank than his suite, looked on while the symbolic cross was sewn upon the cloaks of the new crusaders, till it came to the turn of his own friend. Then Meredyth, says Giraldus, “observing that the cloak on which the cross was to be sewn was of too thin and too common a texture, with a flood of tears threw him down his own.”

From the banks of the Dwryd a very level road soon brings us within sight of Harlech. It is a very distant glimpse of it that we have first; an irregular outline, a grey mass of towers standing out against the sky, raised grandly upon a rock above a plain that is nearly as flat as the sea beyond it. Then trees hide it, and we climb through the woods to the level of the great gate before which so many armies have stood before us--armies of Owen and of Henry, of Edward IV., and of Oliver.

Long, long before Henry de Elfreton, king of architects, built this grand fortress at Edward’s command, a royal castle stood upon this rock. So, at least, says one of the “Mabinogion,” and here, under the spell of the land that created those old romances, I would fain believe that Branwen, the daughter of Llyr, lived at Harlech with her royal brother Bendigeid Vran, and that Matholwch, King of Ireland, came across the sea to woo her, with thirteen ships flying beautiful flags of satin. At the wedding, unfortunately, there was trouble between the two kings; but after a certain amount of friction the banquet was “carried on with joyousness,” and the happy pair journeyed towards Ireland with their thirteen ships. In Ireland Branwen “passed her time pleasantly, enjoying honour and friendship,” which she owed to the fact--we are given to understand--that she presented each of her visitors with a clasp, or a ring, or a royal jewel, “such as it was honourable to be seen departing with.”[8] By and by mischief was made between Matholwch and his wife, and she was sent to the kitchen to cook for the Court, which seems a drastic way of treating a Queen Consort. Then came Bendigeid Vran, her brother, to avenge her, with the hosts of seven score countries and four, and there was war between the two islands because of her. And only seven men of the Welsh escaped, and in Ireland none were left alive except five women. And Branwen went with the seven men of Wales to Mona, and she “looked towards Ireland and towards the Island of the Mighty, to see if she could descry them. ‘Alas!’ said she, ‘woe is me that I was ever born; two islands have been destroyed because of me!’ Then she uttered a loud groan and there broke her heart. And they made her a four-sided grave, and buried her upon the banks of the Alaw.” And her name still lives upon this rock of Harlech in Branwen’s Tower.

Bendigeid Vran, the son of Llyr, was not the last Welsh prince who held his Court here within sight of Snowdon. For Glyndwr made his way in between those great towers after a long siege, during which Henry’s garrison, who were at last reduced to sixteen, locked up their governor because they did not trust his constancy. Glyndwr brought his family here, and held a parliament, and gathered a little Court round him; but after another long siege he lost more than the castle, for his son-in-law Mortimer was killed, and his wife and grandchildren were taken prisoners to London. But it was that later siege by Edward IV.’s army that was the most fierce of all. It was then that the March of the Men of Harlech first stirred the sea-breeze and the hearts of men; and it was then that the blood of six thousand men flowed here where we are standing before the gates. Still later on Harlech held very obstinately for Charles I.

At Harlech we look our last on Snowdon, for the road, high above the sea, soon turns a corner, then dips to the shore at Llanbedr. At this pretty village those who are prepared to face a road that finally becomes little more than a track, and are, moreover, tolerably good walkers, may leave the high-road and drive up into a very wild and beautiful bit of country to Cwm Bychan. I freely admit that the enterprise is more suitable for bicycles than for motors, and I further confess that I have never undertaken it in a car myself; but I should be extremely happy to make the attempt on the first fine day. For Llyn Cwm Bychan is a lovely lake lying among moors and steep, rocky hills; it has the wildness of a loch in Galloway. And the only way out of this hollow in the hills, except the track by which we enter it, is a mighty staircase of stone slabs set regularly in the hillside--a staircase a mile in length, which has withstood time and weather since the feet of the Romans passed this way.

Even the best-advertised car could hardly climb the Roman Steps; so we must rejoin the coast road at Llanbedr and go on our way to Barmouth. There was once a time very long ago, it is said, when all the bay that lies upon our right was a fertile plain, the Plain of Gwaelod, with cities and fortresses thick upon the ground, and a great and busy population, and a king called Gwyddno Longshanks. And because the land lay so low and the sea so close at hand a mighty embankment of stone was built along the shore, and all went well for many a year. But there came a time when the chief overseer of this great dyke was Seithenyn ap Seithyn Saidi, and he, unfortunately, has been known ever since as one of the “three immortal drunkards of the Isle of Britain.” It is easy to imagine the result: the decay of the dyke, and the terrible night when the waters swept all before them and drowned the whole Cantref of Gwaelod. The point of Mochras near Llanbedr was at one extremity of the drowned cantref; and still, when the tide is low, you may sometimes see the long line of the broken dyke. As late as the year 1824 there was a stone in existence which had been found below the sea a hundred yards beyond the shore, and bore an inscription meaning, “Here lies the boatman to King Gwynddo.”[9] I do not know if the stone still exists, but as it was used as a footbridge it probably does not. At the beginning of the nineteenth century this seems, in Wales, to have been considered the best way of using up old monuments. It was certainly the quickest.

Eight miles from Llanbedr is Barmouth. The town itself is becoming every year more entirely a prey to the family group. Every year there are more hotels, more bathing-boxes, more wooden spades. But I doubt if anywhere in England or Wales a town is built in a more beautiful spot. You cannot drive across the long bridge that spans the estuary at its mouth, but you will be a thousandfold repaid if you leave your car and cross the bridge on foot, for the best view--I think I am not too rash in saying the best view in Wales--is from about the middle of the bridge. The Mawddach winds away between two ranges of mountains, on whose grand slopes the brilliant greens and purples, the rich browns and far-away faint blues change every moment under the varying sky. Cader Idris rises on the right in gloomy dignity from the soft drapery of foliage that is flung about his feet. And in the foreground, when the tide is low--and that, I maintain, is the loveliest time--the blue sea is riven with the rosy gold of wet sands, dotted with countless sea-gulls.

A great deal of this we can see as we drive up the estuary on its northern bank to Dolgelley, by an excellent road that clings close under the hills. Every moment the scene changes, and all the changes are good; whether we look across at Cader’s grand shoulder against the sky, or up the valley at the winding water and the distant hills, or overhead on our left at the mountain-sides that rise so steeply from the very road, or even when, the trees hemming us in for a moment, we see only glimpses through them of purple rock or shining river. At Llanelltyd the Mawddach meets the Wnion, and our way lies to the right over the bridge. As we cross the bridge the ruins of Cymmer Abbey lie upon our left on the river-bank--a Cistercian abbey, as we may easily guess, since we know the pretty taste in scenery possessed by that sagacious Order. If the truth were known, I fear we might find that their motive in choosing, as they always did, the loneliest and loveliest spots in the country, was one of self-denial, for the mountainous solitude that we love was in their day regarded with little less than terror. This particular abbey was founded in the last years of the twelfth century, and it was patronised by Llewelyn the Great. Behind it, about two miles away, are the slopes of Nannau, where Owen Glyndwr once went for a walk with his cousin and came back without him.

Owen, as I have already said, was a man of swift and extremely complete vengeance, and treachery made his gorge rise. His cousin, Howel Sele, the lord of Nannau, lived on that hill at the foot of Moel Offrwm, and had little sympathy--so far and so safe was he from the Marcher Lords--with Owen’s overbearing ways. Their relations had been strained, therefore; but when Howel asked his kinsman to visit him at Nannau Owen consented without hesitation--yet not without a coat of mail beneath his outer garment. As they walked in the park with a few retainers they saw a buck at some distance among the trees, and Owen, anxious to please, suggested that Howel should show his well-known prowess with the bow. Howel raised his bow, took aim, paused a moment; then suddenly turned upon his traitor’s heel and shot the arrow straight at the heart of his kinsman. One can picture Owen’s smile as the arrow rang upon the coat of mail that he wore unseen.

Howel went home no more. What dreadful fate befel him no one knows for certain; for probably all his own retainers were killed and Owen’s were too busy to talk. But long afterwards a skeleton was found in a hollow tree quite near the spot where the famous bowman had drawn his bow for the last time. The house of Nannau was burnt to ashes.

Before we cross the bridge to Dolgelley I should like to call attention to a very beautiful drive over the hills between this spot and Maentwrog. Beautiful as it is, it must on no account be substituted for the route by Harlech and the Barmouth Estuary, by those who are travelling in this neighbourhood for the first time; but those who know the estuary well, or those who are staying at Dolgelley and wish for a circular drive, could not do better than go up the Vale of Ganllwyd and over the hills to Trawsfynydd and Maentwrog, lunch at the Tan-y-Bwlch hotel, and return by Harlech.

For the first few miles the road rises through lovely woods; the tempestuous Mawddach shines behind the trees, and beyond it, bounding the narrow valley, are steep and craggy slopes. At Tyn-y-Groes is a charming little hotel, much frequented by fishermen, with a fine view of the Mawddach and the peak of Moel Offrwm; a delightful place to spend a week in summer, since it is within a drive of many of the loveliest parts of Wales, and has itself an outlook of very striking beauty.

Beyond Tyn-y-Groes the scenery grows wilder and the hills more bare; the road rises rather steeply and the surface is not all that could be wished. Presently we pass a turning on the left that would lead us, if we followed it, to the top of that strange colossal flight of steps whose lower end we saw at Cwm Bychan, the way by which the Romans climbed this mountain-side; and soon, as we reach the summit of the hill, the many peaks of the Snowdon range come into sight. After this, as is only to be expected, the view is continuously fine till we drop into Maentwrog on a precipitous gradient, and find ourselves in a valley famed for its beauty.

But we must return to Dolgelley.

“Dolgethle,” says Leland, who favoured phonetic spelling, “is the best village in this commote.” There is not much, if any, of Leland’s Dolgelley left, I imagine; but within the memory of this generation there was still standing a battered little cottage, built half of irregular stone-work and half of timber and plaster, that Leland may well have seen, though very likely it did not interest him nearly as much as it would interest us. It has been replaced by an ironmonger’s shop, and we now supply ourselves with petrol on the spot where “Owen, by the Grace of God Prince of Wales,” held his council, and drew up the instrument that allied him formally with the French. It was now some little time since Henry IV.’s council had written to him scornfully that the power of the rebels was not so great as it was heretofore reported, and that the people of Wales were but of little reputation; for which reason it seemed good to Henry, he said, “not to go thither in person, but by one of our Lords to do punishment on our said rebels.” Henry had said that just three years ago, yet the rebels were still unpunished. The chief rebel, indeed, was now become “our illustrious and most dread Lord, Owen, Prince of Wales,” signing alliances with his royal hand and seal, and receiving a gilded helmet as a gift from the King of France.

At Dolgelley we turn eastwards and make our way back to the English border. As a matter of fact we have not actually reached the limits of North Wales, which is divided from South Wales by the river Dyfi, or Dovey. But for our present purpose it will be more convenient to consider a strip of the North--overlapping our present route--together with a strip of the South, as Mid-Wales, and to return to the border by the laborious but beautiful pass that rises between Dolgelley and Dinas Mawddy.

We have six miles of climbing before us, close under the heights of Cader Idris, through one of the wildest tracts of country in wild Wales, where the road at last rises steeply between rough stone walls across a desolate moor, and a mountain stream dashes below us on the right, and in all probability a flock of little Welsh sheep makes excitedly for the nearest gap. For the Welsh sheep, unlike the sheep of England, has somewhere in its round, woolly head a glimmer of intelligence, and instead of rushing madly past every turning and every gap, knows where it wants to go and goes there with all possible despatch.

At a point six miles above Dolgelley we reach the summit of this precipitous pass, the Bwlch Oerdrws, and the valley lies below us like a gulf. It is a fine scene and a very wild one--wild even when the sun is shining, but still wilder when the great bare hills are looming through driving clouds of rain, and wildest and most beautiful of all when the April snow is glistening upon the April gorse.

The steepest part of the descent, the average gradient of which is between 1 in 7 and 1 in 8, is about two miles long. For the rest of the journey, through Dinas Mawddy and Mallwyd, and up the long climb to Cann Office, and so by Llanfair Caereinion to Welshpool, there is nothing to pause for, except tea at Cann Office. This mysterious name, oddly enough, does not appear on Bartholomew’s map where the place it denotes is called Llangadfan. The little inn there is very popular with fishermen, who seem to have a wonderful knack of securing homely comfort.

Between Cann Office and Welshpool the scenery gradually becomes more English in character, for Welshpool, though not actually on the border, is very near it. “The grounde about the bankes and valley of Severn there is most pleasunt,” says Leland; and “most pleasant,” I think, describes this country perfectly. I cannot do better than end in his words. “And wille I passid this way within a iii miles of Walsch Pole I saw a veri notable hille beyound the valley on the lift hond having iii toppes as iii heddes rising owt of one body.... Communely thei be caullid Brethin Hilles. Not far from thes hilles enterith Shropshir.”

THROUGH THE HEART OF WALES

One may enter Mid-Wales by the Severn Valley, or by Knighton and the Teme. The probability is that one’s action in this matter is entirely regulated by circumstances, but if haply it were possible to be guided simply by charm the road across the wild hills would be the road to choose. For wide moorlands, whatever the season, whatever the weather, never fail to be attractive; whereas the valley of the Upper Severn is extremely variable in its appearance. Indeed, I have seen it look almost uninteresting: though in the spring, when on every hill the fruit blossom is mingled with the piercing green of the budding larches, I know no place where the youth of the year has a more engaging air.

In any case, we must pass through Newtown. Despite its name, despite its modern appearance, the newness of this town is only comparative; for its prosperity waxed, I believe, as that of Caersws waned; and Caersws, a little higher up the valley, was at its zenith in the days of the Romans. We pass it by and by on our right: a mere village now, of no particular attractions on the surface, though no doubt a sufficiently interesting past is buried beneath its soil, for hypocausts have been found here and tesselated pavement, and coins bearing the magic name of Marcus Aurelius and other names less honoured. Less authentic, but more moving, are the associations of the broad meadow on our left, the traditional scene of Sabrina’s flight from--

“the mad pursuit
Of her enragéd stepdame Guendolen,”

and therefore connected for ever with Milton’s exquisite lyric, “Sabrina fair.” This is the “glassy, cool, translucent wave” beneath which the goddess sits; this is “the rushy-fringéd bank” from which--they say--she still sometimes rises at twilight; and here are the cowslips on which she sets “her printless feet” so lightly that they “bend not as she treads.”

Between Llandinam and Llanidloes the scene begins to grow wilder; abrupt hills bare, or patched with gorse, rise from the roadside on our left; we are drawing nearer to the slopes of Plynlimmon. At Llanidloes there is a picturesque old market-place, and the church, founded in the seventh century, has some interesting and beautiful fragments from the Abbey of Cwm Hir; a row of fine Early English arches and some quaint figures on the beams that support the roof.

At Llanidloes we leave the banks of the Severn, and, climbing all the way, pass through a prettily wooded gorge into the valley of another famous river--the river that is more renowned for beauty than any other in England--the Wye. But here at Llangurig the Wye has few charms, for we are at the foot of bleak Plynlimmon, and the river flows through a somewhat dull country that is neither fertile nor wild. Llangurig itself is a desolate, chilly little place, but it has a nice inn; and I believe the fishing is good. About eight miles beyond it we leave the Wye, now a mere mountain stream, at a point that is only four miles from its source, and after this the scenery grows more and more austere, as we skirt the bare sides of Plynlimmon.

Upon those wind-swept slopes the red dragon of Wales was once unfurled; for here Owen Glyndwr, with only five hundred men, was surprised and surrounded by fifteen hundred of the Flemings of Pembrokeshire. He cut his way through them, and left two hundred of them behind him, and left behind him, too, an unshakable belief that he was a wizard indeed.

These heights are not without grandeur. At one point, indeed, there is a very striking and unusual view, where the road is high upon the hillside, and the river, very far below, twists and curls away into the distance through a narrow but extremely level plain. The surface of this main road to Aberystwith is above reproach, but after we turn off to the left on the road to the Devil’s Bridge it is not so good and there are some rather steep hills.

“If pleasant recollections,” says George Borrow, “do not haunt you through life of the noble falls, and the beautiful wooded dingles to the west of the Bridge of the Evil One, and awful and mysterious ones of the monks’ boiling cauldron, the long, savage, shadowy cleft, and the grey, crumbling, spectral bridge, I say boldly that you must be a very unpoetical person indeed.”

The falls, and the wooded dingles, and the monks’ boiling cauldron are still beautiful enough to rouse any poetical feelings that we may possess; but the bridge, alas! is neither crumbling, nor spectral, nor in the least poetical. Three bridges now span the rushing waters of the Mynach, built closely one above the other. The lowest of all, dapper and shining with the cement of the restorer, is the original bridge built by the monks of Strata Florida in the eleventh century and ascribed to the Devil, not from any uncomplimentary feeling towards the monks, but merely because the bridging of the Mynach was no easy matter and demanded a simple explanation. The bridge above this is the one that Borrow calls modern, though it was built in 1735, and now looks older than the first; the topmost and newest of all is quite a recent achievement, and might well appropriate the name of the original structure, since it entirely destroys all the picturesqueness of the scene. No doubt, however, its existence is necessary, for this is the only way across the gorge: and these beautiful wooded hills and deep valleys, with the two tempestuous streams, the Rheiddol and the Mynach, are by no means dependent for their charm on the famous bridge.

The road from this spot to Aberystwith is of a most striking and uncommon character. It is raised high on one side of the bare hill, and overlooks a deep valley, through which the Rheiddol twists and curves. The great hills beyond the valley are richly green in summer, but in the spring are chiefly reddish brown, with streaks of the vivid larch, and here and there a shining patch of gorse. A run of twelve miles, mostly downhill, brings us to Aberystwith.

At the first glance, seen from a distance, it is not unpicturesque. It lies at the end of a valley, with the sea beyond it, and in the heart of it the castle tower stands up conspicuously to remind one that Aberystwith was once something more interesting than a popular watering-place. For once all the resources of England were combined in an attack upon this castle. Guns came from Yorkshire, and timber from the Forest of Dean; huge supplies of arms and various murderous concoctions were sent from Hereford, and a shipload of carpenters landed in the bay to turn the timber into machines of war. There was not a young spark in the country, apparently, but thought it incumbent on him as a man of fashion to join Prince Hal outside the walls of Aberystwith.

Yet the end of all this effort and display was merely comic. Glyndwr’s garrison at last, half starving, agreed to yield the castle upon a certain day unless Owen meanwhile relieved it. The Prince, too hasty, as he sometimes was, went off to London joyfully and received the thanks of Parliament for having secured Aberystwith--at the very moment, had he but known it, when Owen and a relieving force were quietly entering the besieged castle!

This was but one of many sieges suffered by Aberystwith, which was always regarded as a place of much importance; so much so, indeed, that Strongbow’s castle on this spot had been battered into uselessness before the days of Edward I., who had to build another. Prince Henry and Oliver have left little enough of that. What there is of it--some round towers and a piece of the curtain-wall--is more tidy than romantic. To tell the truth, Aberystwith is not a romantic place.

It has been my happy fortune to read some manuscript letters written by a lady from Mid-Wales towards the end of the eighteenth century. This is what she says of Aberystwith--

“I have inquired about Aberystwith, where the Sea is very rough, and no Apothecary near, and most ignorant people in regard to illness, which they are so happy to know nothing of, as the Sea is their ownly Physition.”

This might be useful as a house-agent’s advertisement, if the next sentence were suppressed.

“I think the Sea fogs very unwholesom, but dare not say so, as they are for ever talking about the purity of their air.”

The sea is no longer the only physician at Aberystwith; but the purity of the air is still a topic of conversation.

One of its advantages is that it is only fifteen miles from Ystradfflur or Strata Florida; and though this does not lie upon our route, so short a run is but a slight tribute to pay to a place of such great memories. The drive, moreover, will itself repay us. The road follows the Ystwith most of the way, and crosses it at Trawscoed, where splendid beeches overhang the river and masses of rhododendrons line the banks. There is one formidable hill, with a gradient of 1 in 8, from the top of which there is a fine view of winding river and wooded hills. Soon after leaving the Ystwith we join the Teify near its source.

In the Abbey itself there is little to see, but very much to remember. It was founded in the twelfth century by some Cistercian monks on land given by a Norman; but its foundation is often ascribed to that great prince of South Wales, the Lord Rhys, who was one of its chief benefactors. Once it was the grandest house of worship in all Wales, the burial-place of her southern princes, the depository of her archives; but there is little left to show its past greatness but the unique west doorway and the remains of six side chapels--roofed now with corrugated iron! Behind the south transept is a wedge-shaped strip of ground that was the monks’ cemetery, where, under a stone carved plainly with a cross, lies Cadell, the brother of the Lord Rhys. The large cemetery that holds the dust of eleven Welsh princes is between the Abbey and the river. “The cœmiteri wherin the cunteri about doth buri is veri large,” says Leland, “and meanely waullid with stoone. In it be xxxix great hue trees.” There were originally forty of these yew-trees, and now there are but two or three, so it is hardly likely that one of the survivors should be the tree underneath which Dafydd ap Gwilym, the greatest of Welsh poets, was buried; the tree of which Gruffydd Gryg, his rival, wrote--

“May lightnings never lay thee low
Nor archer cut from thee his bow.”