DEVIL’s BRIDGE,
a long chain of mountains excited our admiration, encircled half way down
with a thick mist, similar in appearance to a girdle: this circumstance
seems to justify the bold imagery, and beautiful description of a
mountain given by the Poet:
“As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm;
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.”—GOLDSMITH.
The comfortable Inn, situated near this romantic spot, stands in front of
the river Rhyddol, and commanding the most picturesque view fancy can
paint, is built by the respectable and truly hospitable owner of Havod.
This celebrated Bridge, so much the object of curiosity and admiration,
is so completely environed with trees, that many travellers, not intent
upon deep investigation, or in pursuit of nature’s landscapes, may pass
over it, without the least suspicion of the dreadful aperture, or the
ancient structure, that conveys them over the gulf. On the Eastern side
we descended a precipitous, and treacherous bank, consisting of slate
rock, or _laminac_, I should imagine, near a hundred feet: this is the
computed measurement; but the eye, confused by the awfulness of the
scene, loses its faculty of judging. From this spot, the vast chine, or
chasm, over which the bridge is thrown, is seen to great advantage: the
whole of this fissure was probably occasioned by some convulsion of
nature, as each indenture seems to correspond with the opposite
protuberance. Under the bridge, the river Mynach, in its confined
course, meeting with obstructions of massy rock, and fragments of
prodigious size, rushes through the chasm with irresistible violence.
This bridge is called in Welsh _Pont-ar-Fynach_, or Mynach Bridge: it
consists of two arches, one thrown over the other. The foundation of the
under one is of great antiquity, and vulgarly attributed to the invention
of the Devil: it is supposed to have been erected as far back as the year
1087, in the reign of William II., by the Monks of Strata Florida Abbey,
the ruins of which are still visible, about ten miles from hence. Gerald
mentions his passing over it, when he accompanied Baldwin, Archbishop of
Cambray, at the time of the crusades, in the year 1188, and in the reign
of Richard I. The original arch being suspected to be in a ruinous
condition, the present bridge was built over it, at the expence of the
county, in the year 1753.—The width of the chasm is estimated at about
thirty feet.
Our Ciceroni first conducted us to a fall on the river Rhyddol,
unobserved in Walker’s _Description of the Devil’s Bridge_, and unnoticed
by Warner. The character of this fall is remarkably singular: a huge
fragment of rock, projecting over the river for a considerable way,
precipitates the water in a singular, and almost inexpressible direction;
the rocks are occasionally variegated by the dark foliage of underwood,
and sometimes barren, rugged, and impending.
Description cannot suggest the full magnificence of the prospect which
spread before us, on our arrival at the grand fall of the Mynach; for
though it may paint the grandeur of the elegance of outline, yet it
cannot equal the archetypes in nature, or draw the minute features, that
reward the actual observer, at every new choice of his position:
reviewing this thundering cataract, in the leisure of recollection, these
nervous lines of Thomson seem to describe much of the scene:
“Smooth to the shelving brink a copious flood
Rolls fair and placid, where collected all
In one impetuous torrent, down the steep
It thundering shoots, and shakes the country round.
At first an azure sheet, it rushes broad;
Then whitening by degrees, as prone it falls,
And from the loud-resounding rocks below
Dash’d in a cloud of foam, it sends aloft
A hoary mist, and forms a ceaseless shower.
Nor can the tortur’d wave here find repose:
But raging still amid the shaggy rocks,
Now flashes o’er the scatter’d fragments, now
Aslant the hollow channel rapid darts;
And falling fast from gradual slope to slope,
With wild infracted course, and lessen’d roar,
It gains a safer bed, and steals, at last,
Along the mazes of the quiet vale.”
The following Table, taken from Walker’s _Description of the Devil’s
Bridge_, gives the exact height from the top of the bridge, to the water
underneath, and the different falls from thence, till the Mynach delivers
itself into the Rhyddol below:
FALLS, &c.
Feet.
From the Bridge to the Water 114
First Fall 18
Second ditto 60
Third ditto 20
Grand Cataract 110
From the Bridge to the Rhyddol 322
The rocks on each side of the fall rise perpendicularly to the height of
eight hundred feet, and finely clothed with the richest vegetation, to
its highest summit.
Near the bason of the first fall from the bridge we entered a dark
cavern, formerly inhabited by a set of robbers, two brothers and a
sister, called _Plant Mat_, or _Plant Fat_, signifying Matthew’s
Children. Tradition reports, that they committed various depredations in
the neighbourhood, and lived concealed in this “_specus horrendum_” for
many years, from the keen research of “day’s garish eye.” The entrance
just admits sufficient light to make “darkness visible.”
With regret we left this romantic spot; where, if Retirement ever had
“local habitation,” this was her “place of dearest residence.” “One
excursion (says Mr. Cumberland) to this place will not suffice common
observers; nor indeed many, to the lovers of the grand sports of Nature.”
The Mynach (in another place he describes) coming down from beneath the
Devil’s Bridge, has no equal for height or beauty that I know of; for
although a streamlet, to the famous fall of Narni in Italy, yet it rivals
it in height, and surpasses it in elegance.
“After passing deep below the bridge, as through a narrow firth, with
noises loud and ruinous, into a confined chasm, the fleet waters pour
headlong and impetuous, and leaping from rock to rock, with fury,
literally lash the mountain’s sides; sometimes almost imbower’d among
deep groves, and flashing, at last, into a fan-like form, they fall
rattling among the loose stones of the Devil’s Hole—where, to all
appearance, it shoots into a gulf beneath, and silently steals away: for
so much is carried off in spray, during the incessant repercussions it
experiences, in this long tortuous shoot, that, in all probability, not
half the water arrives at the bottom of its profound and sullen grave.”