If any place ever lay out of the world, and was proud of itself for
doing so, this little village of Aber-Aydyr must have been very near it.
The village was built, as the people expressed it, of thirty cottages,
one public-house, one shop universal, and two chapels. The torrent of
the Aydyr entered with a roar of rapids, and at the lower end departed
in a thunder of cascades. The natives were all so accustomed to live in
the thick of this watery uproar that, whenever they left their beloved
village to see the inferior outer world, they found themselves as deaf
as posts till they came to a weir or a waterfall. And they told us that
in the scorching summer of the year 1826 the river had failed them so
that for nearly a month they could only discourse by signs; and they
used to stand on the bridge and point at the shrunken rapids, and
stop their ears to exclude that horrible emptiness. Till a violent
thunderstorm broke up the drought, and the river came down roaring; and
the next day all Aber-Aydyr was able to gossip again as usual.
Finding these people, who lived altogether upon slate, of a quaint and
original turn, George Bowring and I resolved to halt and rest the soles
of our feet a little, and sketch and fish the neighbourhood. For George
had brought his rod and tackle, and many a time had he wanted to stop
and set up his rod and begin to cast; but I said that I would not be
cheated so: he had promised me a mountain, and would he put me off with
a river? Here, however, we had both delights; the river for him and the
mountain for me. As for the fishing, all that he might have, and I would
grudge him none of it, if he fairly divided whatever he caught. But
he must not expect me to follow him always and watch all his dainty
manoeuvring; each was to carry and eat his own dinner, whenever we made
a day of it, so that he might keep to his flies and his water, while
I worked away with my brush at the mountains. And thus we spent a most
pleasant week, though we knew very little of Welsh and the slaters spoke
but little English. But--much as they are maligned because they will
not have strangers to work with them--we found them a thoroughly civil,
obliging, and rather intelligent set of men; most of them also of a
respectable and religious turn of mind; and they scarcely ever poach,
except on Saturdays and Mondays.
On September 25, as we sat at breakfast in the little sanded parlour of
the Cross-Pipes public house, our bedroom being overhead, my dear friend
complained to me that he was tired of fishing so long up and down
one valley, and asked me to come with him further up, into wilder and
rockier districts, where the water ran deeper (as he had been told) and
the trout were less worried by quarrymen, because it was such a savage
place, deserted by all except evil spirits, that even the Aber-Aydyr
slaters could not enjoy the fishing there. I promised him gladly to
come, only keeping the old understanding between us, that each should
attend to his own pursuits and his own opportunities mainly; so that
George might stir most when the trout rose well, and I when the shadows
fell properly. And thus we set forth about nine o'clock of a bright and
cheerful morning, while the sun, like a courtly perruquier of the reign
of George II., was lifting, and shifting, and setting in order the
vapoury curls of the mountains.
We trudged along thus at a merry swing, for the freshness of autumnal
dew was sparkling in the valley, until we came to a rocky pass, where
walking turned to clambering. After an hour of sharpish work among
slaty shelves and threatening crags, we got into one of those troughlike
hollows hung on each side with precipices, which look as if the earth
had sunk for the sake of letting the water through. On our left hand,
cliff towered over cliff to the grand height of Pen y Cader, the
steepest and most formidable aspect of the mountain. Rock piled on rock,
and shingle cast in naked waste disdainfully, and slippery channels
scooped by torrents of tempestuous waters, forbade one to desire at all
to have anything more to do with them--except, of course, to get them
painted at a proper distance, so that they might hang at last in the
dining rooms of London, to give people appetite with sense of hungry
breezes, and to make them comfortable with the sight of danger.
“This is very grand indeed,” said George, as he turned to watch me; for
the worst part of our business is to have to give an opinion always upon
points of scenery. But I am glad that I was not cross, or even crisp
with him that day.
“It is magnificent,” I answered; “and I see a piece of soft sward there,
where you can set up your rod, old fellow, while I get my sticks in
trim. Let us fill our pipes and watch the shadows; they do not fall
quite to suit me yet.”
“How these things make one think,” cried Bowring, as we sat on a stone
and smoked, “of the miserable littleness of men like you and me, Bob!”
“Speak for yourself, sir,” I said, laughing at his unaccustomed, but by
no means novel, reflection. “I am quite contented with my size, although
I am smaller than you, George. Dissatisfied mortal! Nature wants no
increase of us, or she would have had it.”
“In another world we shall be much larger,” he said, with his eyes on
the tops of the hills. “Last night I dreamed that my wife and children
were running to meet me in heaven, Bob.”
“Tush! You go and catch fish,” I replied; for tears were in his large,
soft eyes, and I hated the sentimental. “Would they ever let such a
little Turk as Bob Bistre into heaven, do you think? My godson would
shout all the angels deaf and outdrum all the cherubim.”
“Poor little chap! He is very noisy; but he is not half a bad sort,”
said George. “If he only comes like his godfather I shall wish no better
luck for him.”
These were kind words, and I shook his hand to let him know that I felt
them; and then, as if he were ashamed of having talked rather weakly,
he took with his strong legs a dangerous leap of some ten or twelve feet
downward, and landed on a narrow ledge that overhung the river. Here he
put his rod together, and I heard the click of reel as he drew the loop
at the end of the line through the rings, and so on; and I heard him cry
“Chut!” as he took his flies from his Scotch cap and found a tangle; and
I saw the glistening of his rod, as the sunshine pierced the valley, and
then his tall, straight figure pass the corner of a crag that stood as
upright as a tombstone; and after that no more of any live and bright
George Bowring.