Chapter III: The Clwyd and the Dee (1)

The /Clwyd/: Rhyl--Rhuddlan Castle--The Elwy--A Welsh
Gretna Green--St. Asaph--Denbigh--Ruthin. The /Dee/: Bala
Lake--Corwen--Vale of Llangollen and Valle Crucis Abbey--Dinas
Bran--The Ceiriog--Chirk Castle and Wynnstay--The Alyn--Eaton
Hall--Chester--Flint.

The town of Rhyl is like a piece of Liverpool or Manchester, "borne, like Loretto's chapel, through the air," and arranged in long terraces and orderly blocks on a piece of flat coast-land near the mouth of the river /Clwyd/. The place has been much praised by a grandiloquent writer who, in the very height of his rapture, had to admit that "the great object of attraction was the sun setting in a flood of golden beauty on his evening throne." It is a spectacle that may be observed elsewhere. The virtue of Rhyl is that it is easily accessible from large centres of population, that it enjoys pure and bracing air, that it has a vast expanse of firm sands, that the Great Orme and the Penmaenmawr range look very noble and beautiful from its broad promenade, and that the soft winds blow towards it from the pleasant Vale of Clwyd.

But in the immediate neighbourhood of Rhyl even the famous vale has no attractiveness. The bare river flows through bare mud. This enormously wide valley is, for the most part, a soft, dark marsh, on which a thin vegetation struggles to maintain a dank existence. But even from Rhyl there are agreeable views of what the Welsh call Dyffryn Clwyd, the Vale of the Flat, "the Eden of Wales." Three miles away, over an absolutely level and barren space, the wooded knolls and the dark towers of Rhuddlan advance almost to the centre of the valley, and have a fine impressiveness when they are thrown into relief by the shadow of some passing cloud. The Clwydian hills seem to close in behind them, with Moel Fammau in the remote distance. The old poet, Thomas Churchyard, says:

"The vale doth reach so far in view of man
As he far of may see the seas, indeede;
And who awhile for pleasure travel can
Throughout this vale, and thereof take good heede,
He shall delight to see a soyle so fine,
For ground and grass a passing plot devine;
And if the truth thereof a man may tell,
This vale alone doth all the rest excell."

However, it is not until after Rhuddlan has been passed that the great fertility of the Vale of Clwyd declares itself, and to pass Rhuddlan is impossible without some examination, and without some ransacking of one's historical memory; for poor and unimportant as it now seems, this little place has played a great part in the history of Wales.

A long bridge of several arches stretches over from the high road which crosses the marsh, to a steep, firm ascent, a little church with a square tower, and a few small cottages. Other cottages, mostly set amid neat gardens, border on the curves of what is more like a country lane than a village. Then suddenly, for it has been hidden by trees, one comes face to face with the colossal fragments of what must have been a nearly impregnable castle, poised on the summit of a bare, rounded hill, its huge towers buried in ivy, its outer walls sloping down to the Clwyd, and to an outer tower which has long been half in ruins, but which is so strongly built that it may still, for centuries to come, defy the malice of Time. On the partially reclaimed morass on the further side of the river, where a herd of black Welsh cows is grazing, the Saxons under Offa, King of Mercia, fought a great battle with the Welsh, under Caradoc, Prince of Wales, in 795. Caradoc and many of his principal chieftains were slain. The well-known air of "Morva Rhuddlan" commemorates the event, and the native poet sings, not without sweetness and pathos:

"I seek the warrior's lowly bed
On Rhuddlan's marsh; but cannot trace
A vestige of the noble dead,
Or aught to mark their resting place.
Green rush and reeds are all that grace
The graves of those in fight who fell,
For freedom--for their land and race,
Oh fatal field! farewell, farewell!"

Where Rhuddlan Castle stands there was a fortress so early as 1015, and it was taken by Harold Godwinson, in Edward the Confessor's time. Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, rested at Rhuddlan in 1167, when he was preaching a Crusade. Edward I. took Rhuddlan Castle in 1277, and here it was that his son, recently born at Carnarvon, was proclaimed Prince of Wales. Edward made the place his grand depôt for arms and provisions, and his principal residence whilst he was engaged in the conquest of Wales. It was to Rhuddlan, too, that Llewelyn consented to repair to take the oath of fealty. The castle passed into the hands of the Black Prince in the reign of Edward III. Richard II. was here held in honourable captivity after his return from his expedition to Ireland. The forces of the Parliament unsuccessfully besieged the place in 1645, but captured it a year later, when it was ordered to be dismantled, and the long, troubled chapter of its history was finally closed.

The sea comes up to Rhuddlan, which, indeed, has some slight pretensions as a port; then, with flat meadows on one side and low-hanging woods on the other, the Clwyd bends about, this way and that, until, before long, it is joined by the river /Elwy/, which, as it is a pretty river to follow, and takes us to St. Asaph, we shall, for a while, keep company. The Elwy is a merry, romantic, shaded stream, with abundant trout. It is fringed by willow and hazel copse. Sometimes it is wholly lost in foliage, except for a silvery gleam among the leaves; sometimes it comes out into the sunlight, and flows by shingly holms and muddy flats. A peaceful, rich, pastoral country is that through which it courses merrily on its way, with here and there groups of cattle huddling under the hedges for coolness and shade. The water is stained brown with peat, telling of its birth on mountain slopes. Below Ffynnon Fair, seated on the brow of a hill, it receives the waters of a holy well, once sheltered by shrine work, and a place of pilgrimage, as the ivy-clad ruins of a cruciform chapel still declare. And this chapel was also the Gretna Green of Wales, a place for the marriage of runaway couples, as this ancient record shows:--"1611. Mem.: Thatt upon Frydaye, at night, happening upon vij. day of Februarie, one Pyers Griffith ab Inn Gryfydd, my brother in lawe, was married clandestinely with one Jane rch Thomas hys second wieff at the chapel at Wicwer called Capel Fynnon Fair."

The Elwy loses the shadow of its willows and hazels a mile or so below St. Asaph, which is five miles upwards from Rhyl. Winding among deep banks of rich soil, it makes the necessary part of a pretty picture when, flowing under a fine stone bridge of five arches, it forms a foreground for one of the smallest cities, crowned by the smallest cathedral, in all these islands. St. Asaph may be satisfactorily explored in half an hour's time. It spreads itself over a hill, which is called Bryn Paulen, after some legendary Paulinus, a Roman general. The cathedral, which is no more than an average-sized church, is the central and highest object. St. Kentigern is said to have built a church of wood on the site about the middle of the sixth century, when he was driven from Scotland by a prince who declined to be won from Paganism. St. Asaph, who was a native of Wales, succeeded as bishop when Kentigern returned to Scotland. He built a church of stone, in which he was buried in 576. For five hundred years the see has no dependable history; but in the period of the Civil Wars there was a cathedral in which horses and oxen were stabled, and a see whose revenues were sequestrated by Parliament. The building was restored, when Charles II. came to the throne, by Bishop Griffith, and a bishop's palace was erected by his successor, who was none other than the learned Isaac Barrow. The cathedral of St. Asaph contains the tomb of this distinguished prelate, and a monument to Mrs. Hemans, who spent a large portion of her life in the Vale of Clwyd, as readers of her poems may easily discover. In front of the cathedral stands a tall red-sandstone monument, erected in memory of Bishop Morgan, the first translator of the Bible into the language of Wales.

From a couple of miles above St. Asaph to the meeting of the waters above Rhuddlan, the Clwyd and the Elwy pursue an almost parallel course, the Elwy in long bends and sweeps, the Clwyd with almost infinite small windings. To that point their streams have been almost at right angles to each other, the Elwy rising not far from the hills above Llanrwst, overlooking the Conway valley, the Clwyd flowing down by Ruthin and Denbigh, a thin thread of water, except in very rainy seasons, with its course worn so deep, after the lapse of ages, into the rich, yielding soil, that it is sometimes scarcely to be discerned as a feature in the landscape.

Denbigh, say the etymologists, hazarding a guess, means "a small hill." In that case, the older designation, Caledfryn-yn-Rhos ("a rocky hill in Rhos"), was much more appropriate, for the town ascends by one long street to heights that appear mountainous to the tired pedestrian; and from Denbigh Castle, the ruins of which occupy the summit of this "small hill," the land slopes off suddenly to an immense depth of rich pastoral landscape, enclosed in a basin of lofty but graciously rounded hills. Like Carnarvon, Denbigh Castle is to some extent being rebuilt; but it is immeasurably a more hopeless sort of ruin. It was dismantled by order of Charles II., and the work seems to have been thoroughly accomplished, for the walls were of great strength, and it must have been a very determined act of destruction that reduced them to such fragments as now remain. Here, within the actual walls of the castle, but in a cottage that has now been destroyed, was Henry M. Stanley born. The special distinction of Denbigh, however, is that it was the last castle which held out for Charles I. It was, indeed, only surrendered at the king's own order, dated from Newcastle, when Charles was himself a prisoner there.

Eight miles further on is Ruthin, which is another town that clusters about the summit of a hill. The castle here, which has been restored, and is still inhabited, was in existence in the reign of Edward I., and how much earlier is not known. We are now in the richest and most fertile portion of the Vale of Clwyd, with its highest mountain not far away. To the summit of Moel Fammau, 1,845 feet above the level of the sea, is only five miles. The mountain is crowned by the ugly ruin of a tower which was erected at the jubilee of George III. Hence may be seen the valleys of the Dee and the Mersey, and, by aid of a telescope, the coasts of Lancashire and Cheshire. Looking down the Vale of Clwyd, the eye ranges over a landscape that is dotted about with farmhouses and herds of kine; the white, tapering tower of Bodelwyddan Church rises high above its trees, and Rhyl, Llandudno, and Great Orme's Head stand out clearly on the sea margin far away. At a greater distance, and in another direction, one may behold Snowdon and Cader Idris, with their summits buried in brooding clouds.

* * * * *

The river Dee rises in a country which has been immemorially associated with the Arthurian legends. Here, indeed, was the infant king committed to the care of old Timon, and here his boyhood was spent--

"In a valley green,
Under the foot of Rauran mossy hore,
From whence the river Dee, as silver clene,
His tombling billows rolls with gentle rore."

So says Spenser, using a phrase which may have been in Shakespeare's mind when he made Bottom promise to "roar you as gently as any sucking-dove." Almost beyond counting are the streams which empty themselves into Bala Lake, high up among the peaks of Merionethshire. And they scarcely run dry in the hottest summers, for, as a cynical humorist has written--

"The weather depends on the moon as a rule,
And I've found that the saying is true;
For at Bala it rains when the moon's at the full
And it rains when the moon's at the new.
"When the moon's at the quarter, then down comes the rain:
At the half it's no better, I ween;
When the moon's at three-quarters it's at it again,
And it rains, besides, mostly between!"

The Dee is said to flow through the lake without mingling its waters--a tradition that may be gently set aside. It rises on the flank of Aran Benllyn, and already receives two tributaries before it joins Bala Lake at its head. At Llanuwchllyn, near to the spot at which the three little streams become one, it has grown important enough to be crossed by a rude stone bridge of two arches.

DENBIGH (_p. 227_).]

Drayton speaks of Bala Lake as Pimblemere. That is a name signifying "the lake of the five parishes." Llyn Tegid, the lake of beauty, is the favourite Welsh designation. And a very beautiful lake it is, though with less majesty of surroundings than one would expect to find at such a height, in such a country, where, as George Borrow says, everything is "too grand for melancholy." It was the largest sheet of water in Wales until Lake Vyrnwy was made, its length being about four and a half miles by about a mile in average breadth. In the Welsh mind it has filled so large a place that there is a tradition of how the bursting of the banks of Bala Lake caused the Deluge. A feature that has always attracted much attention is the influence of a south-west wind in driving its waters outward into the Dee. Thus, for example, writes Tennyson, speaking of Enid's nursing of Geraint:--

"Her constant motion round him, and the breath
Of her sweet tendence hovering over him,
Filled all the genial courses of his blood
With deeper and with ever deeper love,
As the south-west, that blowing Bala Lake,
Fills all the sacred Dee."

A sacred character has been associated with the Dee from the very earliest times. It was "holy" to the Druids; it was a "wizard stream" to Milton; Drayton speaks of where "Dee's holiness begun," and credits it with presaging woe to the English or the Welsh according as, in one portion of its course, it shifted the bed of its stream. The Dee is a mountain-river from Bala downwards, and until Llangollen has been passed. Its outlet from the lake is through a quaint, many-arched stone bridge--a bridge, as Coleridge might have said, "with a circumbendibus." The railway runs close at hand for almost the whole of its course, which, for the present, lies through what is the peculiar country of Owen Glendower. We have encountered traces of this valiant chieftain at Machynlleth, Dolgelley, and almost everywhere that we have been; but here, at Corwen and roundabout, the country fairly reeks with his memory. The Dee is a fair, wide river when it leaves Bala Lake, and flows for a while through open meadow lands, to plunge before long and with great suddenness into a beautiful mountain gorge, where it is overhung by trees. At the delightful village of Llandderfel it is crossed by another picturesque bridge, set among rocky hills which teem with wild legends, and shortly thereafter it flows once more among wide, open spaces, bare, bleak, and harried by the winds. The Vale of Edeyrnion is the name of the country through which we have just passed, and this valley, in which the character of the scenery changes so conspicuously and so often, comes to an end just before the town of Corwen is reached.

Grey, slaty, nestling among trees and wooded heights, with a slate quarry prominent in the foreground, with many odd, old-fashioned, solid-looking houses, Corwen has a church dedicated to Mael and Sulien, saints unknown to the English calendar. Of Sulien it is said that he was "the godliest man and greatest clerke in all Wales." On a stone in the churchyard is shown "the true mark of Owen Glendower's dagger," which weapon he threw from a rock behind the church, thus doing something more to surround his life with legend. There was another Owen whom the Corwen folk hold in loving remembrance--that Owen Gwynedd, Prince of Wales, who opposed himself to Henry II., and who made so strong an encampment near the town that there were vestiges of it remaining in Pennant's time.

BALA LAKE.]

There is an exquisite view of the Dee from what is known as Owen Glendower's Mound. The surrounding country is comparatively open; but the river is again, before long, lost in a narrowing valley and among rich woods. And by this time we have come into the region of modern achievement. The valley of the Dee is now to be seen to most advantage from Telford's road, which brings us to more than one of the seven wonders of Wales, and first of all to the glorious Vale of Llangollen. George Borrow has too much limited the scope and range of this glorious valley. "The northern side of the vale," he says, "is formed by certain enormous rocks called the Eglwyseg rocks, which extend from east to west, a distance of about two miles. The southern side is formed by the Berwyn hills." Here, says Mr. Ruskin, speaking from a wide observation, "is some of the loveliest brook and glen scenery in the world." The remains of Valle Crucis give a special human interest to a district that is wonderfully full of beauty and charm. It was a Cistercian house, much smaller than the other famous abbeys of the same order, but resembling them in certain high architectural qualities, as well as in the seclusiveness of its situation. The abbey was founded by Madoc, Lord of Bromfield, in the time of King John, in what was, even at that time, called the Valley of the Cross, in virtue of the mysterious "Eliseg's Pillar," which is still a puzzle to the antiquary. The ruins lie among steep hills--

"For when one hill behind your backe you see,
Another comes, two times as high as Dee,"

as Thomas Churchyard sings. The main tower of the abbey appears to have been standing in the days of this poet; but now nothing remains but its piers. The pointed gables on the eastern and western ends of the church are, however, conspicuous objects still. The abbey is believed to have been at the point of highest prosperity in the time of Owen Glendower. Henry VIII. employed the abbot to draw out a Welsh pedigree for him, which was, no doubt, as faithfully done as circumstances would allow. Two later abbots became Bishops of St. Asaph. And then followed the Dissolution, with all its waste and ruin.

The Bridge of Llangollen is enumerated among the "seven wonders of Wales," four of which belong to the Valley of the Dee. It scarcely seems to deserve this particular renown, though it is a very excellent specimen of a mediæval bridge, its builder being John Trevor, Bishop of St. Asaph, who completed his work in 1350. The Dee at this point flows over a solid bed of rock, or, as Churchyard says:

"And still on rocke the water runnes, you see,
A wondrous way--a thing full rare and strange,
That rocke can not the course of waters change;
For in the streame huge stones and rockes remayne
That backward might the flood, of force, constrain."

The name of Llangollen is, by some authorities, derived from St. Collen, to whom the church is dedicated. It is an ordinary enough little town in itself; but is so remarkably placed that the eye can scarcely turn in any direction without finding pictures of most extraordinary beauty.

On the opposite side of the bridge from the town the hill of Dinas Bran rises, a huge cone, to the height of a thousand feet or so. It is so regular in its conical shape that it at first suggests artificial construction. But just at this place the hills are all abnormal. The Eglwyseg rocks, for example--best seen from the slope of Dinas Bran--might have been transported from some cañon in Colorado. They are a strange series of cliffs, one above the other, regular as walls, and with dark bushes clinging to them in such a manner as to suggest cave dwellings. They are a greater wonder than Dinas Bran itself, which, nevertheless, is very remarkable and striking. On its summit is the ruin of what is popularly known as Crow Castle, attributed in local guide-books to the British, but obviously of much later construction, and probably a relic of Norman times.

From this singular eminence there is a far-stretching view of the valley of the Dee, as the river speeds on its way to a rich and more open country. Near to where the stream is further swollen by receiving the waters of the Ceiriog, it is spanned by the majestic aqueduct which carries the waters of the Ellesmere Canal, one of those few architectural achievements which, placed where Nature has done her utmost, add a new beauty to their surroundings. Even more unrestrained praise might be given to the fine, slender, lofty pillars and arches of the Dee viaduct, which is among the greatest works of the Great Western Railway. The aqueduct is Telford's work, and the viaduct was built by Robertson. For the former, however, Telford claimed no credit, for he wrote thus in praise of his foreman:--"The Vale of Llangollen is very fine, and not the least interesting object in it, I can assure you, is Davidson's famous aqueduct, which is already reckoned among the wonders of Wales."

Churchyard differentiates very discreetly and observingly between the Ceiriog and the Dee. The one, he says, is "a wonderous violent water when rayne or snowe is greate," and the other is "a river deep and swifte," running "with gushing streame." The meeting-place of the two rivers is distinguished as the site of two famous houses, each surrounded by fine parks. On one side is the feudal castle of Chirk, and on the other is Wynnstay, which has long been the seat of the great family after which it is named. Chirk Castle dates back to the eleventh century. It was the home of those Myddletons to whom belonged that famous Sir Hugh Myddleton who brought the New River to London. Wynnstay also has its history, for here lived Madoc ap Gruffydd Maelor, who built Valle Crucis Abbey. It is now the principal seat of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, whose possessions are so extensive that he is sometimes called the real Prince of Wales. The present Hall dates only from a time that is still very recent, for its predecessor was burned down in 1858. From the terrace of Wynnstay there is such a view of the Dee--of wood, of river, of lofty bridge and distant mountains slopes--as seems almost to belong to the landscape of another world.

EATON HALL (_p. 237_).]

The Dee has finally emerged from the mountainous country when it flows, with many a sharp bend, and long, glittering loop, between the grounds of Chirk Castle and of Wynnstay. It is shortly to become a river that is English on the one side and Welsh on the other, and already, except in the distance, we have seen the last of the characteristic scenery of North Wales. The Dee now courses through a country of wide plains. Offa's Dyke runs in a straight line through the grounds of Chirk Castle, almost to the point at which the stream is crossed by the railway viaduct. Watt's Dyke commences on the other side of the Dee, a little lower down, and proceeds through the grounds of Wynnstay, past Ruabon, in the direction of Wrexham. What may have been the purpose of these ancient fortifications is a question which the antiquaries have so far failed to answer in any way that is final and conclusive. Thomas Churchyard has an explanation which is as good as any that has since been offered. He says--

"There is famous thing
Cal'de Offa's Dyke, that reacheth far in length;
All kind of ware the Danes might thither bring;
It was free ground, and cal'de the Britaine's strength;
Wat's Dyke likewise about the same was set
Between which two both Danes and Britaines met,
And trafficke still."

At these Dykes, too, it would appear, the exchange of prisoners was generally effected. In their origin, no doubt, they were defensive works, as well as lines of demarcation.

After its junction with the Ceiriog, the Dee divides Denbighshire and Shropshire for some two or three miles. Soon afterwards it again becomes wholly Welsh for a brief while, and forms the boundary between Denbighshire and Flint. This is after we have passed Ruabon, and the great Welsh coalfield. Here is Overton Churchyard, one of those "seven wonders of Wales" whose title to fame is so often inexplicable. At this place there is less to wonder at in the churchyard itself than in the view of the Dee which is presented therefrom, for here it winds, with many curves, through a pleasant valley, interspersed with broad, flat green spaces, woods, and low, rounded hills. Bangor-on-Dee, the chief spawning ground for salmon, is near at hand; and, then, before long, the great tower of Wrexham Church comes in sight, much more of a wonder than either Overton Churchyard or Llangollen Bridge.

The river /Alyn/ joins the Dee below Wrexham. It has come through much lovely country, of one portion of which, near Mold, Pennant says:--"I hang long over the charming vale which opens here. Cambria here lays aside her majestic air, and condescends to assume a gentler form, in order to render her less violent in approaching union with her English neighbour." The Alyn runs underground for about half a mile after it has passed the old fortress of Caergwele. Indeed, as Drayton says, with all due exactness, "twice underground her crystal head doth run." Our first great landscape painter, Richard Wilson, was buried at Mold, and it was in the vale of the Alyn that fortune at last came to him, for here, on a small estate which had been bequeathed to him, he came upon a vein of lead, and was henceforth able to live in reasonable affluence.

"And following Dee, which Britons long ygone
Did call 'divine,' that doth to Chester tend"--

so remarks Edmund Spenser. First, however, we pass Eaton Hall and its splendid grounds. Sir John Vanbrugh built a great mansion on the site, which was pulled down when Gothic architecture again came into fashion. Its successor was, in spite of great cost and elaboration, an architectural failure, and it has now given place to Mr. Waterhouse's greatest and most colossal achievement in domestic architecture. This magnificent seat of the Duke of Westminster is situated in a very extensive park, in which there is one avenue two miles in length, bordered on each side by forest trees. The style of architecture adopted by Mr. Waterhouse is that which prevailed in France in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. "There is not a house in England," it has been said, "that has been built on a more perfect arrangement." The Dee flows round the outskirts of the park to the beautiful village of Eccleston, where the grounds, sloping down to the river, are very beautifully ornamented with trees. Henceforward to Chester the stream is like a broad reach of the Thames, calm, massive, with leafy banks, a truly impressive introduction to one of the most famous of English cities.

Chester is remarkable alike for its present and its past. It shares with York the distinction of having kept its ancient walls unimpaired; and the walls of Chester, of a rich red sandstone, are much finer, both in colour and in form, than those of the northern city. The definite history of the place goes back at least as far as Agricola, who was at Chester in the year 60 /A.D./ as an officer in the army of Suetonius Paulinus. Then it was, probably, that the Romans first established a camp on the banks of the Dee. Chester seems to have been the headquarters of the Twentieth Legion, which, soon after the death of Augustus, was stationed at Cologne, on the Rhine, from the reign of Claudius to the departure of the Romans from Britain. The memorials of this occupation are not now very numerous, but are of the highest value in determining what kind of city Chester was when it was occupied by a legion so distinguished that it was generally placed in posts of difficulty and great honour. Probably the most perfect hypocaust in England is that which is to be seen in the grounds attached to the Water Tower at Chester. Ignorant men who offer themselves as guides still speak of the wall as Roman work, and one may find for them this excuse, at least--that the existing walls, with but one deviation, follow the line of the Roman fortifications, part of which can be seen near the canal, not very far from the point at which it communicates with the Dee. The Road-Book of Antonine has this entry: "DEVA. LEG. XX VICTRIX."

Among the pictures which most impressed the present writer's boyhood was an illustration of Edgar the Peaceful being rowed down the Dee by eight tributary princes. The incident is not legendary, but historic. One might linger for almost any length of time in this unique city, recalling the memorable facts of its history, were not the Dee still tempting us along. It is a city surrounded by beautiful country, and is full of a quaint charm, with rare architectural features. The famous "Rows"--long covered galleries above the basements of the houses and shops, originally intended for purposes of hasty defence--probably reflect the influence of Rome on the city long after the departure of the legions. This was the surmise of Stukeley, who wrote, "The Rows, or piazzas, of Chester are singular through the whole town, giving shelter to the foot people. I fancied it a remains of the old Roman portico." Nowhere else in these islands are the ancient, half-timbered houses, like the "God's Providence House" which has become so famous, in such satisfactory preservation, and they have given a character even to the modern architecture of Chester, which, in many striking instances, is only a reproduction on a larger scale of the prevailing style of the past.

Chester has two cathedrals, and a remarkable ecclesiastical history. The city walls, round which the river sweeps in broad, bold curves, are chiefly of the Edwardian period. From one of the towers, which is now much what it was during the Civil Wars, Charles I. watched the defeat of his army on Rowton Heath. Chester was shortly afterwards surrendered, and thus was finally lost the cause of the king in the north-west. Following the walls to the opposite side of the city, we find that pleasant pictures are made by two of the Dee bridges--the modern Suspension Bridge for foot-passengers, erected where the river is of great breadth, and the old Dee Bridge, just under the walls, with a huge flour-mill beside it, and a little colony of salmon-fishers on the other side, not far away. Passing the Roodee, a great level space by the river, on which the races are held and other popular festivities take place, we arrive at the great iron arch of the Grosvenor Bridge, which is as noticeable on account of its design as because of the breadth of its single span.

CHESTER CATHEDRAL, FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.]

For eight miles henceforward the river flows through an artificial channel, made for purposes of navigation, and with the consequence of reclaiming some five thousand acres of land. The swing railway bridge, opened by Mrs. Gladstone in 1889, the first cylinder being placed in position by Mr. Gladstone two years earlier, is the next object of interest. Not far away is Hawarden Park, "not exceeded in beauty by any demesne in the world," says Dean Howson. After these eight miles of artificial waterway have been traversed, the Dee suddenly broadens out into a wonderful estuary, which, according to the state of the tide, separates England from Wales by wide stretches of water, or by still wider stretches of sand. We pass the Castle of Flint on our way downwards, with one huge round tower dipping its base into the Dee. The town which it once defended is known in these days for its chemical works; but it has seen stirring times. It was here that Richard II. was held prisoner, within "the rude ribs of that ancient castle," as Shakespeare says, and here, also, it was that Bolingbroke became King of England. The Castle of Mostyn, not far from where the shore of the river becomes the coast of the sea, was also mixed up in these transactions. Nearly midway between these two fragments of mediævalism are Basingwerk Abbey and the Fountain of Holywell, which is even to this day credited with the working of miracles.

The estuary of the Dee has its Lindisfarne; for, as an old writer on Hillbree Island, with the square tower of its church rising above a wooded knoll, has remarked, "It is an island but twice a day, embraced by Neptune only at the full tydes, and twice a day shakes hands with great Britain." The sands stretch away in almost illimitable expanse, the Wirral Promontory making a distant, faint, and irregular boundary between the Dee and the Mersey. Kingsley's account of one of Copley Fielding's sketches of the Dee estuary says almost all that is possible in the way of description:--"A wild waste of tidal sands, with here and there a line of stake-nets fluttering in the wind--a gray shroud of rain sweeping up from the westward, through which low red cliffs glowed dimly in the rays of the setting sun--a train of horses and cattle splashing slowly through shallow, desolate pools and creeks, their wet red and black hides glittering in one long line of level light." It was the simple, dreary grandeur of the picture, combined with the relation of a tragic story, which inspired one of the most pathetic ballads in the language--that long, piercing wail, "The Sands of Dee":--

"'O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home
Across the sands of Dee.'
The western wind was wild and dank with foam,
And all alone went she.

"The western tide crept up along the sand,
And o'er and o'er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see.
The blinding mist came down and hid the land:
And never home came she.

* * * * *

"They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel crawling foam,
The cruel hungry foam,
To her grave beside the sea:
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
Across the sands of Dee."

/Aaron Watson./

THE MERSEY.

A Modern River--Derivations--The Tame, the Goyt, and
the Etherow--Stockport--Northenden-The Irwell and its
Feeders--Manchester and Salford--The Ship Canal--Bridges over the
Irwell--Ordsall--Eccles--Barton--Warburton--Irlam--Warrington--
Latchford--Runcorn and Widnes--The Weaver--Eastham Locks--Liverpool
and its Growth--Its Docks and Quays--Birkenhead and its
Shipbuilding Yards--New Brighton--Perch Rock Lighthouse.

Mersey may be described as the most modern of our rivers. There was a time, in fact--and that not measured by geological computation--when, so far as knowledge of it went, the Mersey could hardly be said to be in existence. Even the great estuary where a world's argosies now assemble escaped the attention of the Romans, and we come down to the beginning of the eleventh century before we find the Mersey named in any record. It is mentioned for the first time in a deed of the reign of Ethelred, and there it figures less as a river than as a boundary mark concerning a grant of some lands "between Maersae and Ribbel." It has been said also of the Mersey that it got its name from the fact that it formed the northern limit of the kingdom of Mercia. Another derivation, and not an altogether unlikely one, when considered along with the chief seat on its banks and the open channel beyond, is that in "Mersey" we have the Celtic word "Marusia," signifying quiet or sluggish water. A more curious derivation, and one lending itself to the belief that in the early history of our country the character and identity of the Mersey were very different from what they are to-day, is that the word is from the Anglo-Saxon "Meres-ig," or "Sea-Island." It is known that what is now the Wirral Peninsula, forming the western boundary of the estuary of the Mersey, was at one time cut off from the mainland by the sea. It is known also that the Dee flowed over into the Mersey; and as the two rivers must then have appeared as one, with a common mouth, it is easily seen how in the long ago the Mersey would escape recognition altogether.

But the river that was to minister to the greatness of Lancashire, and through Lancashire to aid so materially in the development of industrial Britain, was, of course, no sudden creation. It may have been for ages nothing but quiet or dead water, but Nature in her slow and sure way was all the while working in its favour. For centuries, vessels, as they sailed up and down the west coast, passed by the Mersey, and found their way instead up the Dee to Chester, or up the Ribble to Preston, and occasionally up the Lune to Lancaster. But, even as they did so, these streams were gradually becoming less navigable. A strong tidal flow raised sand barriers at their entrances, and for some considerable distance upwards, that meant danger to shipping. The same cause gave the Mersey its opportunity and its individuality; and once the bar at its mouth was crossed, there were found not only capacious and safe anchorage, but possibilities for commercial enterprise that have gone on increasing from the moment at which men began to take advantage of them.

The Mersey has its origin in three other streams that come down to it from Yorkshire and Derbyshire uplands; and when it becomes for the first time entitled to the name, it is among huge factories, and not by willow-covered banks. The three streams in question are the Tame, the Goyt, and the Etherow. Starting from the Peak district, and running between Derbyshire and Cheshire, the Goyt strikes a northerly course, and for a considerable distance forms the boundary line between the two counties. Near to the village of Mellor it receives the Etherow, which has come down from the breezy region known as the backbone of England, almost at the meeting-point between Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Cheshire. Like the Goyt, the Etherow serves as a boundary line between Derbyshire and Cheshire. It runs through Longdendale, where is one of those artificial lake districts which come by way of compensation to the country from the town; for here, on the slopes of Blackstone-edge, are the reservoirs which until recently were thought sufficient for the water-supply of Manchester and district. Four in number, they mean a daily supply of 25,000,000 gallons; but that is not enough for the steadily increasing population of the great city and its environs, and Manchester has therefore gone much further afield, and tapped Thirlmere, so as to secure an additional supply of 50,000,000 gallons. From here the Etherow runs merrily down to where the Goyt comes northwards to meet it. The combined stream, now of somewhat doubtful identity, goes westward to Stockport, and receives there the Tame from beyond Saddleworth, on the Yorkshire borders.

The Mersey now takes name and form. Starting at Stockport, it has an industrial beginning at a point that must formerly have been possessed of no small picturesqueness. Built on the slopes of a gorge, Stockport is in these days a town of bridges. Through it runs the London and North Western railway on a viaduct rising to a height of 111 feet, supported on some twenty arches, and stretching from 600 to 700 feet. Railway lines centre here from all points of the compass; and in the past, as to-day, Stockport was regarded as a key to the situation north and south. The Romans recognised its importance. The Normans were equally alive to its strategic value, and built a stronghold here, where the Earls of Chester long held court. The castle at Stockport was demolished during the Civil Wars by order of the Parliament, but not until it had been taken by Prince Rupert, and by General Leslie after him. It was from Stockport also that Prince Charlie passed during the Stuart rising in 1745. The name of the town gives a clue to its history. Here was a great fort where stores were kept. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the present spelling of the name is comparatively modern. In old days it appears plainly as Storefort and Stokefort. The place has never lost its reputation as a source of supply, although what it yields now is produced within its own boundaries. It is an important textile centre, and the seat of the felt hat trade; and from it also much good work is sent out in iron and brass. It has always been an active town politically, and a statue of Richard Cobden in the market-place shows the delight the inhabitants take in recollecting that for six years they had the great Free Trader as one of their two representatives in Parliament.

From Stockport the Mersey serves as the boundary line between the counties of Chester and Lancashire. At Northenden, where its surroundings are rural and pleasing, it takes a sudden turn to the north, and after several twists runs decidedly and sharply to the north-west, till it gets to Stretford. Here it is in touch with the southern suburbs of Manchester, and is at its nearest point to that city. For its natural junction with the stream which leads to Manchester, we must, however, follow the river over what is now a tortuous westerly course, past Flickstone to Irlam. At this point, some nine miles from Manchester, the Irwell and the Mersey used to meet in confluence. They do so still, but under other than the old conditions. In the course of last century Manchester found it advisable to meet the demands of its increasing trade by making the Irwell, and next the upper parts of the Mersey, navigable for small vessels; and in the closing years of the nineteenth century she has caught up the waters of her own considerable tributary, and those of the main stream, in a series of capacious locks along that great water-way which has now made what Mr. Gladstone has called "the commercial metropolis of England" a great inland seaport.

The Irwell is fed by more rivers than any other of Mersey's tributaries of the same length, and all along its course it serves manufacturing purposes, as the appearance of its waters betokens only too clearly. Rising in the neighbourhood of Burnley, it passes through Rosenstall, Tottington, Bury, and Radcliffe. At the last-mentioned place it receives the Roch, and then goes westward to Farnworth, where it is joined by the Tong. Taking next a south-easterly direction, it passes through Prestwich, and after a bend to the north of Pendleton it runs into Manchester. At Manchester the Irwell is fed by three other streams darker even than itself, these being the Medlock, the Irk, and the Cornbrook. The Irwell divides Manchester from Salford, but it is only by the black boundary line thus afforded that it is possible to tell where the one borough ends and the other begins. Each is distinct so far as civic and Parliamentary affairs are concerned; but in all that concerns their material well-being, they are one. Both are mentioned in the Domesday Book, and there are glimpses of them back to the Roman occupation.

There were signs of industrial activity in Manchester in the thirteenth century, when a fulling mill is mentioned as having been in operation on the riverside, and when the dyeing of yarns and cloth was also practised on the banks of the Irwell, or its tributaries. Leland, coming here in Henry VIII.'s time, found Manchester "the fairest, best builded, quickliest, and most populous towne of all Lancestreshire." Camden, in his pilgrimage in the reign of Elizabeth, also paid Manchester a pretty compliment, seeing that he described it as "surpassing neighbouring towns in elegance and populousness." Dr. Stukeley, writing in the first half of the eighteenth century, refers to Manchester as the "largest, most rich, populous, and busy village in England." The term "village" seems strangely out of place applied to what is now so great a community; but it is significant as showing how enormously Manchester has grown since then. Dr. Stukeley speaks of there being about two thousand families in the place, "and their trade, which is incredibly large, consists of fustians, tickings, girthwebs, and tapes, which are dispensed all over the kingdom, and to foreign parts." The population of Manchester to-day is probably not far short of 600,000, and that of Salford (which for Parliamentary and municipal purposes includes Pendleton) is about 200,000. Both towns combined did not contain more than 90,000 inhabitants at the beginning of the present century. It is estimated that some 700 different industries are now carried on within their borders. The explanation of this extraordinary development is to be found in an observation made by one of the topographers of last century regarding Manchester--namely, "that the inhabitants are not only thrifty and inventive, but very industrious and saving."

It is this "striving and inventing something new"--this disposition to go forward, and make the most of their circumstances and surroundings--that has made modern Manchester. Arkwright with his spinning frame, and Hargreaves with his spinning jenny, were not at first made too welcome, masters and men in Manchester combining against these appliances. But the revolution effected by what Arkwright and Hargreaves had done elsewhere was too obvious to be ignored; and when the inventions of these men were fairly introduced into the seat of the cotton trade, followed as they were by Compton's "mule," the way was opened up in Manchester for greater developments. It was not enough, however, to improve the quality of goods and augment the output: it became necessary to increase the facilities for the introduction of the raw material, and for the prompt removal and distribution of the finished article. Much was done in this direction by the ready support Manchester gave from the first to the canal system. The town got into touch with the navigable waters of the Mersey by opening a waterway of its own from Longford Bridge to Runcorn in 1767. Other canals brought it into touch with the north, the south, and the east of England. This was an immense gain over the waggon and pack-horse arrangements that had previously prevailed, and the trade of Manchester grew apace, developing eventually more quickly than there were means for dealing with it. The introduction of the factory system, and the replacing of the old hand-looms by looms having steam as the motive power, forced Manchester to consider whether some still speedier method of transit could not be obtained. Fortunately, with the hour came the man, and with the man came also the agency that was wanted. George Stephenson and his "Rocket" appeared upon the scene. Lines of rails were laid westward, not without immense difficulty, over Chat Moss to Liverpool; and from 1830 it became possible to have communication between Manchester and Liverpool in almost as many minutes as it had formerly taken hours.

With the aid of the locomotive, and all that is meant by this mode of transit, the trade of Manchester continued to expand, progressing to such an extent that during recent years it became necessary to consider whether Liverpool itself, although but an hour distant by rail, was not too far away for Manchester merchants. Manchester could not go to the sea, but the sea could be brought to Manchester; and again with the hour the man appeared. In April, 1877, the suggestion came from Mr. Hamilton H. Fulton to establish tidal navigation between Manchester and the Mersey. Beyond an indication of what could be done, nothing came of the proposal, but Manchester people will not forget that Mr. Fulton first mooted the scheme that was eventually taken up on the strength of designs submitted by Mr. E. Leader Williams. A start was given to the movement at a meeting held in June, 1882, at the residence of Mr. Daniel Adamson, of Didsbury. On November 11th, 1887, the first sod in the making of the canal was cut by the Chairman of the Company (Lord Egerton of Tatton) at Eastham. In seven years from that time the canal was completed, it being opened for through traffic on New Year's Day, 1894. The formal opening by the Queen took place on the 21st of May in the same year. At the time of the opening for traffic, the canal, including sums paid in compensation for vested interests, had cost £11,750,000.

The Ship Canal being a continuation of the Mersey, and the two blending in some places and in others running in close proximity, some of the engineering and other features of this the greatest of our English artificial waterways will be referred to as the further course of the Mersey is sketched. But as the canal has its headquarters in Manchester, it may be mentioned here that its total length from Eastham, where it runs into the estuary of the Mersey, to Pomona Docks at Manchester is 35-1/2 miles, that its average water width at the level is 172 feet, and that its width at the bottom is 120 feet, except between Barton and Manchester, where the bottom width is as much as 170 feet, with 230 feet stretch at the level. As the minimum depth of the canal is 25 feet, it has, therefore, accommodation for the largest vessels; and as it is lit up with the electric light along its course, it is navigable by night as well as by day. The canal is in four stretches, divided by five sets of locks, that eventually raise its waters to a height of 60-1/2 feet above the sea. There is a range of docks both on the Manchester and on the Salford side of the terminus of the canal, with a great open stretch of water for the movement of vessels. Mere figures give but a poor idea of the extent and character of the canal, but there are certain features which appeal strikingly to the least imaginative mind. Thus, in regard to the excavations, we have the startling statement that the quantity of earth removed to secure a channel for the canal could have made a wall round the globe 6 feet high and 2 feet thick, and that enough bricks were used to make a causeway 6 feet wide from one end of the kingdom to the other. Another point we have to remember is that but for improved machinery and the use of steam and of powerful explosives, the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal in all its parts, instead of being accomplished in seven years, could hardly have been finished in half a century.