From the pools Teifi descends impetuously to the mere graveyard that

reminds one of the Mynachlog Fawr, or Great Monastery, of which only

an archway remains. Either Rhys ap Tewdwr or Rhys ap Gruffydd, royal

princes both, was the founder of the abbey, which was so important an

establishment that Henry IV. made a special expedition to destroy it.

If, as tradition says. Dafydd ap Gwilym--"the greatest genius of the

Cimbric race and one of the first poets of the world," in the opinion

of George Borrow--was buried here, one can understand the patriotic

influence of such a spot, and Bolingbroke's ruthlessness. But many

are the poets and princes, as well as Dafydd ap Gwilym, who lie in

this "Westminster of Wales." The Strata Florida monks have been made

responsible for the Devil's Bridge, on the Rheidol--that _bonne bouche_

for visitors to Aberystwith. Excavations have recently been made in the

abbey precincts, with promising results.

Strata Florida is accessible by railway from the Manchester and Milford

station of Pontrhydfendigaid. It must be confessed that some courage

is required to alight at this dreary place on a wet autumn day. Teifi

traverses dismal bog-land for miles hence: a vast flat of glittering

pools and reddish grass and reeds, abounding in hares. One marvels that

no serious attempt has been made to drain these thousands of acres: not

such a difficult task, surely, considering the steep fall to the west

beyond the hills. However, each landlord to his own ideas. Tregaron is

passed, and still Teifi is rather a dull stream, though it can be seen

that, lower down, the hills are drawing together suggestively. This

is a famous district for cattle-drovers and cattle fairs. Your modern

Cardigan farmer finds in these fairs one of the main excitements of his

life. But the dealers are often far gone in whisky by the end of the

fair-day, especially if they have had "bargains."

So towards Lampeter, leaving on the east Llanddewi Brefi, where, in

/A.D./ 519, was held the Great Synod, attended by St. David,

at which Pelagius was adjudged a heretic. Teifi has now become a real

river, broad and swift, and a charm to the angler. A column on a hill

by Derry Ormond holds the eye. This is a tale told of it. The grandsire

of the present owner of the estate wooed a young lady of London, and

brought her home; but she pined for the Metropolis, and said either

that she could not or would not live where she could not see London.

To help her a little in this respect, her husband built the column.

History does not inform us whether the wife was won to her allegiance

by this proof of marital infatuation.

Teifi does not excel in its auxiliary streams. This is explainable

by the nature of the country it traverses. Its watershed is not an

extensive one, like Towy's. The streams that flow to it throughout its

course are all insignificant in size, though the two Cletwrs (Fawr and

Fach), Afon Cych, and especially the merry little mountain-rivulet that

joins it a mile west of Newcastle Emlyn, are not without the customary

fascinations of these well-nigh untrodden glens of Wild Wales.

It is when Teifi turns decisively to the west and its home in the long

inlet of Port Cardigan that its graces become truly bewitching. From

Llandyssil to Newcastle Emlyn it alternates between sweet, green,

hill-bounded reaches and contracted gorges which trammel and fret it so

that it roars with dissatisfaction. At Newcastle its valley is broad

again, with wooded hills on all sides, enclosing the pretty little

village and its castle. Put thence to Cardigan it is majestic all the

way, zigzagging with glorious curves, and with high, densely-wooded

banks in the main. Seen when the tints are on its trees, this part of

Teifi's course makes an enduring mark on the memory. The salmon-fisher

who comes once to Teifi here (and it is a prolific river, in spite

of the "professionals," who take heavy tolls at its mouth) will have

abundant compensation, even though he have poor sport. There is no

railway between Newcastle and Cardigan; but what a nine miles' drive or

walk it is!

At Cenarth, for instance, it is impossible not to pause awhile. Here

the river bursts from a confined defile into greater freedom, sweeping

under a bridge of the Edwards hall-mark. Cenarth is a lovely little

village, out of the world, given up to the woods and the crying

waters. And under its bridge, at the side, you may see some of the

tiny coracles still in use on this stream. Fashions die hard in these

sequestered parts of Wales. Giraldus tells us that the beaver kept its

haunt on the Teifi when it was extinct elsewhere in Great Britain.

There is a contenting sameness about Teifi all the way to Cardigan:

unchanged perfection. Two miles short of this capital town, however, it

speeds to the south, and then turns boldly in its final curve towards

the sea. Above it here, on a lofty crag, with woods caressing it, is

Kilgerran Castle, which Turner painted. He could hardly have resisted

the temptation, having seen it. The castle remains consist of two

towers and a gateway, all of the thirteenth century. Historically,

little seems known about it.

[Illustration: _Photo: Hudson._

MILFORD HAVEN (_p. 185_).]

Thence Teifi makes for the defile which ushers it to salt water, past

the small yet prosperous county town, which has close sea intercourse

with Bristol, and does a good trade in fish. Cardigan, like all these

Welsh capitals, has a fragmentary castle; so fragmentary, indeed, that

it is hardly discoverable. It has also an old church with a remarkably

massive tower, having a buttress like a staircase. From its churchyard

tombstones one may learn much, as well as the common lesson of the

mortality of mortals. It is, for example, interesting to the stranger

to be informed that "Let" is no unusual Christian name for a man here,

and "Lettice" for a woman. The town suffers from a complaint nowadays

rare among the capitals of British counties, to wit, difficult railway

communication with the rest of the land. This will be remedied somewhat

when the existing line is continued from Newcastle Emlyn. But one may

be excused for hoping that Teifi's banks may for years to come know

nothing of the mauling and devastation that will be inevitable when

this takes place.

If you wish to see Teifi, or Tivy, quite to its end, it is worth while

to go north another three miles, to Gwbert-on-the-Sea, a distinctly

primitive and pleasing watering-place, facing Kemmaes Head, with the

mile and a half of Teifi's mouth (at its widest) intervening.

[Illustration: THE TEIFI AT KILGERRAN.

_Photo: S. J. Allen, Pembroke Dock._]

Bidding farewell to the beauteous Teifi, we must now in few words

track the last of our rivers to the same inevitable destination.

/Ystwith/ has had no poets that we are aware of. Not all who

visit Aberystwith, indeed, perceive (though they surely might) that it

gives its name to this salubrious town. The Rheidol, which also enters

the sea at Aberystwith, is treated with distinction. For it there is a

solid, handsome bridge, lighted with lamps. But for Ystwith there is

only a very commonplace bridge.

The Ystwith rises in the broken upland a few miles south of Plinlimmon,

runs in a deep channel for three or four miles, and then, with little

hesitation, though infinite sinuosities, rushes due west. Its entire

length is not more than thirty miles. Until it comes to the road

by Eglwys Newydd, and within four miles of the Devil's Bridge, on

its rival the Rheidol, and even past Hafod, it sees few admirers,

though it might have many. People who come to Eglwys Newydd, on their

circuitous way to the Devil's Bridge, do not go out of their path to

see the Ystwith, but the Chantrey monument, in memory of Miss Johnes,

in this "New Church." Farther west the Manchester and Milford Railway

runs in its valley from Trawscoed, and accompanies it to the sea. Here

its beauty is of a superb order. The wooded mountains soar with most

impressive effect on its southern side, now and then parting to show

an abysmal glen, just as densely wooded, down which a baby stream

tumbles towards our Ystwith. It matters not so very much, except to the

angler, if the river does suffer from lead-poisoning. The mines do not

obtrude themselves; and one may cheat oneself into the belief that the

thickness of its waters comes from the melting snows high up on the

mountains which it taps. For a few miles one may search the vocabulary

for adjectives in eulogy of Ystwith. Then it sobers into comparatively

level ground, and green pastures between receded green and heather-clad

hills succeed the splendid towering woods. For the rest of its journey,

it is an ordinary stream, and as such it slides into the sea just south

of the town with a modesty that is almost affecting.

Aberystwith the piered, esplanaded and castled, might well condescend

to take a little notice of its humble "godparent," as well as of the

Rheidol, and might gain credit in the condescension. This resort

of a certain order of fashion (especially now that there are sweet

girl-graduates to give a classic touch to its broad breezy promenade)

seems, however, fully content to rely on the seducing charms of its

powerful pure air, its tea-gardens on Constitution Hill, and--the

Devil's Bridge.

Wondrous indeed is the power of ozone! It reconciles us to weeks

in lodging-houses that are ugly to behold and are in themselves

uncomfortable. Not that Aberystwith is worse off in this respect

than other places. Indeed, it may be said to be in a better plight

than most, since the Esplanade buildings are handsome, once you have

accepted their uniformity. Even were it otherwise, it would matter not

at all to the sojourner in bracing Aberystwith! He acquires resignation

and divers other virtues merely in breathing this pure invigorating air

on the broad paved walk between the lodging-houses and the sea.

[Illustration: _Photo: E. R. Gyde, Aberystwith._

ABERYSTWITH.]

Of Aberystwith's castle it must suffice to say that it dates from the

eleventh century, and owes its parentage to Gilbert Strongbow. Cromwell

cut its little comb effectually, and now it exists only in fragments.

They are, however, attractive morsels, and the little green enclosure

which they prettily dignify is a popular resort for visitors. There

are seats about it, and you may perch close over the mutilated low

cliffs of the coast and watch the breakers rolling in towards the town,

while listening with your mind's ear to the tales told by Time of this

downright ancient little place. The University buildings adjoin the

castle demesne. They are quite grandiose. One wonders how often in

the year the noise of the waves on their stones is so loud that it

distracts the academic minds within its stately walls. It has been said

authoritatively that "Aberystwith stands out as being far and away the

Welshiest of the University Colleges, and Cardiff as the most English."

This is gratifying to those of us who like to see the boundary-lines of

nationalities clearly defined. And yet the faces of the students in the

streets here do not show their birthright as one would expect.

But enough. One must be very morose or abased in body as well as

mind not to perceive the peculiar charms of Aberystwith. To the

enterprising, and perhaps jaded, sojourner in this Brighton of Wales

it may, moreover, come as welcome news that for a mile or two of its

course the Ystwith is of a beauty matchless even in Wales.

/Charles Edwardes./

[Illustration]

[Illustration: DOLGELLEY (_p. 200_).]

RIVERS OF NORTH WALES.

CHAPTER I.

THE DOVEY, THE DYSYNNI, THE MAWDDACH.

Glories of A Wet Autumn in North Wales. The /Dovey/: Source of

the Stream--Dinas Mowddwy--Mallwyd--Machynlleth. The /Dysynni/:

Tal-y-Llyn--The "Bird Rock"--/Towyn/. The /Mawddach/: The

Estuary--The Wnion--Torrent Walk--Dolgelley--Precipice Walk--The

Estuary--Barmouth--Harlech Castle--Portmadoc--The Glaslyn--Tremadoc

and Shelley--The Traeth Bach.

There are times of the year when North Wales seems to be all rivers and

mountain torrents and tumbling cataracts. The hills are seamed by thin,

white streaks of foaming water. It is as if all the land were rushing

down to the valleys and the sea. What was yesterday a slow dribble

from pool to pool, a scarcely perceptible moisture among weeds, a

narrow reflection of sky among stones and boulders, is to-day a broad,

impetuous stream, or a wide expanse of bog-stained water, or a torrent

swollen and turbulent. The cataracts which have disappointed the

tourist in dry seasons come down in a way that wholly sustains their

ancient reputation. But the mountains are, for the most part, hidden in

mist, or whelmed in cloud; the white roads glitter like streams, and--

"The rain, it raineth every day;

Heigho, the wind and the rain!"

Yet, decidedly, it is in a wet autumn that one should see North Wales.

"Then, if ever, are perfect days," when the whole glory of wild Nature

reveals itself in some interval of dripping rains; when the brown

foliage, dipping into the flooded rivers, glows like gold in some

sudden outburst of the sun; and when the mountains fade upward from

their heathery bases, and purple middle-distances, into shadowy peaks

of faintest blue.

[Illustration: RIVERS OF NORTH WALES.]

How fascinatingly the bells of Aberdovey have rung themselves into the

popular consciousness! And all by means of some foolish verses that are

as securely immortal as the famous and touching air in which Neil Gow

has set the bells of Edinburgh town to music:--

"'Ae os wyt ti'n fy ngharu i

Fel 'rwyf fi'n dy garu di,

Mal un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech,'

Go the bells of Aberdovey."

Seated in a boat in the middle of the estuary of the /Dovey/

river, one laments the fact that the bells exist in legend only.

How sweetly they would sound through the distance and in the dusk,

over this wide expanse of shallow water and glimmering sand! But the

little town of Aberdovey, hugging the hillside at the south-westerly

corner of Merionethshire, has certainly had no peal of bells at any

date more recent than the time when Owen Glendower descended into the

Dovey valley to procure his own proclamation as Prince of Wales. It is

a humble little town, which, as somebody has remarked, seems to ask

itself why it is not Liverpool. It has a wharf and a deep-water pier,

and a railway at only a few yards from the beach. Large vessels could

lie in safety near to the doors of the Aberdovey folk, and the maps

insist strenuously on the directness of the sea-routes to Dublin, to

Rosslare, and to Waterford. They are direct enough, no doubt; but who

cares to travel by them? Only a few small schooners are to be seen

in the harbour of Aberdovey. Two or three others are drawn up high

and dry on the sands, so that one might almost leap on board from the

thresholds of the cottages. If the world were more happily ordered, the

chief trade of the place might be the exchange of rich merchandise;

but, as one may perceive from the pier yonder, it is merely the

exportation of slates.

The river Dovey--or Dyti, as it is called in the more ancient

language--rises among the peaks of Aran Mowddwy, and, dashing down

the mountain-sides with a pretty music, leaves Merioneth for a while

to course through a jutting corner of Montgomeryshire. Then it

becomes the boundary between Merioneth and Cardigan, making its way

to the sea through an estuary 6-1/2 miles long--broad, noble, and

impressive, with hills green, gentle, and round on its left, and on

its right high mountains and purple heather, and "the sleep that is

among the lonely hills." It is a river much beloved of angling folk,

for there are "salmons" not only, as Fluellen said, in Monmouthshire,

but also in Montgomery and Merioneth. Likewise there is abundance

of sewin and trout; and the fisherman who visits Dinas Mowddwy,

Mallwyd, or Machynlleth will be likely enough to store his memory with

recollections not only of fine scenery but of glorious days.

Dinas Mowddwy is a small village with a large hotel; but it was nothing

less than a city in the old days, and it calls itself a city still.

Even up to so recent a date as 1886, it had all the honours of a

borough, with a Mayor of its own, and a Corporation, and a Recorder,

and the tradition of a charter dating from James I. It may be reached

by means of a ridiculous but convenient railway from Cemmaes Road, the

trains consisting of an engine and one carriage, with, possibly, a few

truckloads of slates attached behind. Aran Mowddwy, on which the Dovey

rises, is, next to Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. It is the

centre of a district full of vague traditions and curiously varied

grandeur and beauty. After the death of Owen Glendower, "many powerful

gentlemen of Wales" assembled at Dinas "for the purpose of making

compacts to enforce virtue and order." Their success can scarcely have

been very great, for it was at this place, not long afterwards, that

the "Red-Haired Banditti of Mowddwy" were wont to hold their meetings

and arrange their murders. It is pleasant to be able to record that

in due course these gentry were as effectually suppressed as were the

Doones of Exmoor, if the story of John Ridd is to be believed. How they

found means to exist by rapine in a country so sparsely peopled is not

now intelligible; but they were, clearly, a very savage and revengeful

folk, for forty arrows were found in the body of a judge who had

condemned some of their brethren to death.

Sparkling along through Dinas, and flowing under the ruins of an

ancient bridge, with a more modern and substantial structure close

beside it, the river Dovey shortly reaches Mallwyd, where there is a

church that is much visited, occupying the site of an earlier edifice

which is said to have been erected by St. Tydecho in the sixth century,

and with an ancient yew-tree which the saint himself is believed to

have planted. On the other side of the river stands the farmhouse of

Camlan, associated by a tradition, into the veracity of which we need

not now inquire, with Camelot, and that "battle long ago" in which King

Arthur is said to have been overthrown. All this wide, winding Dovey

valley teems with history of a sort. At the farmhouse of Mathafarn,

below Cemmaes Road, "the great poet and scholar," David Llwyd ap

Llewelyn, entertained the Earl of Richmond, who was afterwards to

become King Henry VII., and was then on his way to Bosworth fight. At

Machynlleth, with its fine, broad, mediæval street, much frequented

by salesmen of cattle and sheep, you may see the house in which Owen

Glendower held his Parliament after he had "defeated" the English by

flying before them into the hills. Machynlleth itself was the Roman

station of Maglona, and is now a fairly considerable town, situated

almost as happily as Dolgelley, with the square ivy-clad tower of an

ancient church dominating the centre of the valley. Here the beautiful

river Dulas joins the Dovey, and hence one may travel by the tiny

Corris railway to Tal-y-Llyn, through some of the most satisfying

scenery in all Wild Wales.

[Illustration: TORRENT WALK, DOLGELLEY (_p. 198_).]

Before reaching the estuary, the Dovey wanders through much wide

marshland, over which a railway has been carried, where there is a

railway station set amid desolateness, and where no tree or shrub

breaks the flat, brown margins of the stream. From such scenery it is

very agreeable to break away to where, at high tide, there is a sheet

of water six miles broad--the sweetest, calmest, most restful estuary

in all Wales, with Borth sunning itself by the sea far away, with

hills at whose feet plantations flourish, and mountains with fir-woods

climbing up their slopes.

Flowing from the sides of Cader Idris, which holds a gloomy lake in

its lap, there is a complex network of streams. Several of these

join themselves together to form the little river Dysynni, which,

after wandering among the mountains for twelve miles or so, drowns

itself in the sea beyond Towyn. One of the sources of the Dysynni

is Tal-y-Llyn. Noble and beautiful and ever memorable is the valley

through which the stream hurries downwards from that renowned lake,

the object of innumerable excursions made from Dolgelley, from Towyn,

from Machynlleth, and from all the wild, wonderful, fascinating places

roundabout. Tal-y-Llyn is no more than a mile long, and a quarter of

a mile broad; but it is like a small piece of Norway transported to

Wales. Here alike come those who are intent on reaching the summit of

Cader Idris, and those who desire to follow "the contemplative man's

recreation," for the Dysynni, like the Dovey, is a famous fishing

river. Salmon, sewin, and gwyniad are to be found therein, from May

until after the autumn leaves are falling. There are white and sea

trout, and bass, and in the estuary plentiful grey mullet, which make

fine and exciting sport when a ring of nets is thrown around them, and

the noisy and vigorous "beaters" drive them into the meshes.

[Illustration: THE LOWER BRIDGE, TORRENT WALK (_p. 199_).]

One must go up the Dysynni to see the famous "Bird Rock," a great

shoulder of mountain on which the hawk and the cormorant dwell. It is

so precipitous that it may be climbed on only two of its sides, and

it has one of those echoes for which Wales is almost unapproachable,

so that the music of any instrument that is played upon it will be

reverberated in a startling chorus from all the surrounding hills.

Lower down the river, always amid such scenery as it were vain to

describe, there is the site of a manor house from which Prince Llewelyn

wrote important letters to ecclesiastical magnates in London, and which

that stout soldier-king Edward I. visited, for he dated a charter

thence. Older relics there are, like the Tomen Ddreiniog, which, maybe,

is one of "the grassy barrows of the happier dead." It is a valley

renowned for its birds and their songs, this of the Dysynni, and for

its rare plants and mosses, and its rich store of maiden-hair fern. As

we approach Towyn the mansion of Ynys-y-Maengwyn, the dwelling of an

ancient Welsh family, presents a quaint and most picturesque mixture

of architectural periods, for it combines all the styles of domestic

architecture that prevailed between the period of Elizabeth and that of

the Georges.

The Dysynni is a land-locked river as it approaches the sea, for the

Cambrian Railway crosses its estuary. There is a spectacle on one hand

of what seems a lake among purple mountains, and on the other of a

stream winding amid dreary flats to the breezy waters of Cardigan Bay.

Towyn, which is but a small place, has a certain fame for sea-bathing,

and for its association with "a holy man of Armorica, who came to Wales

in the sixth century to refute the Pelagian heresy." One does not

inquire too curiously into these things; but there, not far from the

estuary of the Dysynni, is St. Cadfan's Church, and St. Cadfan was one

who performed miracles; and in the church there is a pillar which, as

some aver, is inscribed in debased Roman characters, and once marked

the site of St. Cadfan's grave.

* * * * *

"Neither the North of England, nor Scotland, no, nor Switzerland, can

exhibit anything so tranquil, romantic, snug, and beautiful as a Welsh

valley." These are the words of John Wilson, the "Christopher North"

of the famous "Noctes Ambrosianæ" and the "Recreations"; the "rusty,

crusty Christopher" of Lord Tennyson's early satire. He was thinking

of Dolgelley and all the indescribable charm of its surroundings.

Wilson was a Scot who had dwelt continuously and for many years amid

the English Lakes. He knew his Switzerland, too; and it must have been

reluctantly, one would think, that he gave this unstinted praise to

the particular valley in which North Wales seems most to unite its

grander and its quieter beauties, all its wonders of mountains and

wood, torrent and waterfall, snug valley and scarred and towering

height. The /Mawddach/ estuary, which has the appearance of a

chain of lakes, winds among the mountains as far as Penmaenpool, where

there is a long, low, sinuous railway bridge of innumerable arches.

Here, where the Mawddach suddenly becomes a stream, flowing through

green marshes, with its course indicated by lines of deep-driven

stakes, Christopher North must often have been reminded of the head

of his beloved Windermere, missing only the solemn and silent majesty

of the Langdale Pikes. Following the river upward through the wide,

marshy plain until it again hides itself among woods and hills, one

comes upon the river Wnion, which is chiefly of importance among Welsh

rivers because it is famous for its trout, because it winds through

Dolgelley on its way, and because, two miles further upwards, it is

joined by the tumultuous thread of water which tumbles from pool to

pool, over cataract after cataract, close beside the steep, mile-long

piece of sylvan beauty known as the Torrent Walk. Until it receives

this tributary the /Wnion/ is, except in seasons of rain, but a

thin and feeble stream; but it flows through beautiful and shady woods,

fretting sometimes over a rocky bed, sometimes flowing in a peaceful,

sunlit calm, and now and again reflecting one of those wide-arched,

mossy bridges which indicate by their breadth of span how much way this

little river claims for itself when the thin silvery threads of all

the small streams that flow into it from the Arans on one side, and

from the lower slopes of Rhobell Fawr on the other, are swollen into

mountain torrents by continuous rain.

[Illustration: BETWEEN DOLGELLEY AND BARMOUTH (_p. 202_).]

There are innumerable little rivers in North Wales, boiling down

over tumbled rocks, in deep valleys, with trees swaying and arching

overhead. The type of these is the turbulent brook, so narrow that

one might leap across it, which descends through the Dwygyfylchi

valley, and then quietly loses itself in the sea between Conway and

Penmaenmawr. But in all Wild Wales there is no such mad, merry,

laughing, and leaping piece of water as the long cataract which

hastens down from the upper to the lower bridge of the Torrent Walk,

to join the Wnion two miles above Dolgelley. It falls, like a white

mist, amid riven cliffs; it pours itself, with a frolic music, between

great masses of moss-grown rock; it dips under tree-trunks which have

been thrown across it, like rustic bridges, by long-forgotten storms.

The channel which this torrent has made for itself is a deep, dark,

winding cleft through a beautiful wood on the side of a steep hill.

It is in the late autumn that it is at its best, when the trees are

of all rich tints, from russet to gold, and when there is a glorious,

glowing carpet of brown leaves on either side of the Torrent Walk,

and when the torrent itself, swollen by the unfailing rains, breaks

into white spray amid the blue mist of the cataracts. The Wnion is

tame enough after such a spectacle; but it makes some really striking

loops and bends as it winds away to Dolgelley, broadening out in the

ever-broadening valley, and then darting forward to the tall, grey

arches of Dolgelley bridge, where it dreams along for a while over its

multitudinous pebbles, and then wanders away into the green shadow of

trees.

[Illustration: _Photo: H. Owen, Barmouth._

BARMOUTH BRIDGE AND CADER IDRIS (_p. 203_).]

Dolgelley is the capital of Merioneth, and the curfew is still rung

there; and some of its houses retain all the quaintness of the

Elizabethan age, and its streets are so odd, and winding, and confused,

that one thinks of the legend of the giant's wife who dropped a heap

of stones from her apron, the which in due course became a town. In

the distance, Dolgelley looks like a grey nest amid green branches,

sheltering in a basin of the hills. It is walled round by the

mountains, Cader Idris being its loftiest and its grandest bulwark.

Owen Glendower had a Parliament House here, pulled down only a few

years ago; and that is almost the whole history of the place, which is

attaining some small additional importance in these days because the

gold mines are not far away, and also by reason of its manufacture of

excellent Welsh cloth.

[Illustration: _Photo: I. Slater, Llandudno._

SNOWDON, FROM CRIB-GOCH.]

It is a land of cataracts all round about; but to reach the finest of

those one must leave the river Wnion and ascend the Mawddach valley,

up the beautiful Ganllwyd Glen, and so to the gold mines. Rely not too

implicitly on those learned books which would instruct the confiding

stranger wandering amid these mountainous wildernesses. "There are

three fine Falls on the Mawddach," one reads in a book of considerable

geographical pretensions--"one of 60 feet in Dolmelynllyn Park,

another of 60 feet called the Mawddach Fall, the third, of 150 feet,

called the Pistyll-y-Cain." "I wonder," said an American humorist,

"whether it is worth while knowing so much that is not so." The

Rhaiadr-y-Mawddach--over which, at this stage, flows the river that is

shortly to broaden out into the grandest estuary in Wales--descends,

in two leaps, into a large and magnificent basin, about which the

rocks and trees have arranged themselves into a noble amphitheatre.

The Precipice Walk is not far away. One may behold all the Snowdon

region from this dizzy height on the open hillside; the Ganllwyd valley

opens out below; the Arans tower upwards to the right; and beyond the

village of Llanfachreth, looking northward, rises the grand mass of

Rhobell Fawr, its head half-hidden in a cloud, "that moveth altogether,

if it move at all." And as for the Pistyll-y-Cain and the Rhaiadr-Du,

"the black cataract," the one, as its name indicates, is the fall of

the river Cain, and the other is the fall of the Camlan, less broad,

less precipitous, at the first glance less impressive, than its more

renowned rival, but quite wonderfully beautiful in its surroundings,

its rocks and woodlands, its dual leap, and many windings, and numerous

tumbling streams.

Says a Welsh proverb: "There is only one prettier walk in Wales than

the road from Dolgelley to Barmouth. It is the road from Barmouth to

Dolgelley." The adjective is ill-chosen. Not prettiness, but a calm

majesty, is the characteristic of the rich scenery of the valley of

the Mawddach. When the tide is up, the river between Penmaenpool and

Barmouth is like a chain of lakes among bold and craggy heights,

sloping brown moorlands, and terraced woods. One is reminded sometimes

of Switzerland and sometimes of the Rhine. It is advisable to ascend

the river, as Wordsworth did, in a boat. The poet was at Barmouth in

1824, when he rowed up "the sublime estuary, which may compare with the

finest in Scotland." One is always driven back upon these comparisons.

The estuary of the Mawddach arouses sensations of strangeness and

unexpectedness. Even amid the grandeur and the beauty of North Wales,

it seems to belong to some other country, and almost to a land of

dreams. It may have been some recollection of rowing upwards towards

Penmaenpool that inspired the first and greatest of the Lake poets with

two of his most splendid lines:--

"I hear the echoes through the mountains throng;

The winds come to me from the fields of sleep."

And the scenery here is everything. There is little history to engage

the mind. One merely shudders at the story of how, in what are now

the grounds of Nannau House, Owen Glendower fought with his cousin,

Howel Selé, slew him, and hid the body in a hollow tree. The Abbot

of Cymmer is credited with having brought about the meeting, in the

hope that the two kinsmen might be reconciled; but who knows anything

about the Abbot of Cymmer? So much of the abbey as remains is mixed up

with farm buildings, amid beautiful sylvan scenery, about two miles

from Dolgelley, and near to the banks of the Mawddach. Griffith and

Meredydd, lords of Merioneth and grandsons of Owain Gwynedd, Prince

of North Wales, founded the abbey in 1198. The architecture suggests

Irish influences, and an Irishman by whom such influence is likely to

have been exercised is known to have emigrated to Wales at about the

time of the foundation. The monks were of the Cistercian order, and

the abbey was dedicated to St. Mary. The ruins of the church are the

principal portion of what now remains. The abbot's lodgings and part of

the refectory have been incorporated into the present farmhouse. The

emissaries of Henry VIII. penetrated even to this remote spot, and so

the abbey was despoiled.

Barmouth, which, in Welsh, is Abermaw, or the mouth of the Mawddach,

is built in strange fashion about the foot of a mountain which is

surpassingly noble in its contour. Some of the houses cling high up

among the perilous slopes. In one direction they look out to sea, and

in the other across the "sublime estuary" at its widest part. The rich,

glowing woods of Arthog climb up the opposite slopes, with the side of

Cader Idris rising like a vast cliff above their topmost branches. The

little town, with its tremendous background of rugged mountain, has

been likened to Gibraltar. The oldest of its dwellings is alleged to

date back to the reign of Henry VII. For us of to-day the place has the

interest of having been selected as the earliest of the settlements of

Mr. Ruskin's Guild of St. George. "I have just been over to Barmouth,"

the Master wrote many a year ago, "to see the tenants on the first bit

of ground--noble crystalline rock, I am glad to say--possessed by St.

George on the island." Grandly impracticable was the idea of settling

a community of this kind in such a place, and one looks at the small

cottages, high on the hillside, with a feeling that they are a stray

and stranded fragment of Utopia.

It is a bare, ordinary-looking town, this Barmouth, when surveyed

from the level of its lower streets; but there is an unapproachable

dignity, beauty, and charm in the wide, level stretch of sand and water

which lies between here and Arthog, which winds inland among the brown

mountain-slopes, which broadens outward to Cardigan Bay. The bridge is

a curious and useful rather than a pleasant feature of the landscape.

It carries a railway that branches off to Dolgelley on the one hand,

and to Glandovey and South Wales on the other. Fortunately, it lies low

down, and close to the water, as it were, its central portion being

occasionally raised for the admission of ships, of a tonnage, however,

that is marvellously small. From its further side, where the sand has

gathered into hillocks, crowned by long, waving, rank grass, the town

of Barmouth, with its vast hill of Craig Abermaw, brings into mind

the castle of Chillon and its surroundings. It seemed poor and common

enough, away there on the other side of the bridge; but from this point

it is graceful, noble, almost sublime.

* * * * *

The grand castle of Harlech looks out on to the waters about midway

in that waste of shore which divides Barmouth from Portmadoc. The

castle has long been a ruin, but, all things considered, it has been

magnificently preserved. It had the fortune to escape the dismantling

which was so nearly universal during the Civil Wars. Later times have

been less considerate, for many of the houses roundabout have been

built from the stone and timber of the fortress; yet, looking at it

from a distance, the place still seems to be intact, and grandly

formidable in its strength and its situation. From Portmadoc it is

the principal feature of the landscape as the eye sweeps round the

fine curve of the bay. The interest of Portmadoc itself lies in

the incomparable view of the Snowdon range which is to be obtained

therefrom, and in a curious association with Shelley. A huge alluvial

plain, the Traeth Mawr, or Great Sand, sheltered by an irregular

semicircle of hills, makes an impressive foreground. Here one might

expect to hear tales of that Prince Madoc who is alleged to have

preceded Columbus, by a huge interval, in the discovery of America; but

Portmadoc, with its long, low line of railway across the Traeth Bach,

its small schooners laden with slate, its rows of houses struggling

about the hillside, its active industry, its bridges and quays, is

a town of quite modern date, its history extending backward only to

the end of the last century, and its name being derived, not from the

adventurous prince whom Southey has made the subject of an epic, but

from an energetic Mr. Maddocks, who reclaimed 2,000 acres of good

land from the sea, and carried a mile-long mole of stone across the

great estuary into which the little river Glaslyn flows. Portions of

Portmadoc are at this day some two or three feet below the sea-level.

One may obtain from here one of the best views of Snowdon; and on the

south side of the valley, over which his shadow seems to be cast, the

Cynicht--the Matterhorn of Wales, as it has been called--rises up in

noble and entrancing proportions. Hence, too, come into impressive

prominence the green and grassy sides of Moel Wyn. A walk of a

few miles would bring us to Beddgelert, or to the lovely Pass of

Aberglaslyn, with its unforgettable admixture of mountain and of sylvan

scenery; or, by climbing the hill at our back, we may come within sight

of Tremadoc, and the house in which the poet Shelley alleged that he

was assailed by a mysterious and murderous visitant. Into the Traeth

Bach, which is an unreclaimed extension of the Traeth Mawr, pours down

the stream which accompanies the traveller on the "baby railway" from

the heights of Blaenau Festiniog. Westward lie Criccieth and Pwllheli,

and the sharp bend of the Lleyn peninsula, and Bardsey Island and its

lighthouse, round which one may sail into Carnarvon Bay.

[Illustration: THE ESTUARY, BARMOUTH.]

RIVERS OF NORTH WALES.

CHAPTER II.

THE SEIONT, THE OGWEN, THE CONWAY.

The /Seiont/: Llanberis Pass--Lakes Peris and Padarn--Dolbadarn

Castle and Ceunant Mawr--Carnarvon and its Castle. The /Ogwen/:

Llyn Ogwen and Llyn Idwal--Bethesda--Penrhyn Castle. The /Llugwy/:

Capel Curig--Moel Siabod--Pont-y-Cyfing--Swallow Falls--The Miners'

Bridge--Bettws-y-Coed. The /Lledr/: Dolwyddelen--Pont-y-Pant. The

/Machno/ and its Fall. The /Conway/: Fairy Glen--Llanrwst--Gwydir

Castle--Llanbedr--Trefriw--Conway Marsh--Conway Castle and

Town--Deganwy--Llandudno.

The river /Seiont/ is only about thirteen miles long. One seldom

hears mention of its name, except by the trout-fisher, it may be. It

is treated, in general, as of small account. And yet, surely it is

one of the most distinguished rivers of North Wales, for does it not

drain the north-eastern side of Snowdon, and flow through the Pass

of Llanberis, and broaden out into Llyn Peris and Llyn Padarn, and

finally, after devious wanderings, and much merry tumbling among rocks,

boulders, and little reedy islets, culminate in a port, with the great

castle of Carnarvon guarding its exit into the Strait across which one

looks to the lovely island of Anglesea? But if few speak of the Seiont,

there has been unlimited eloquence concerning the grandeur--what the

descriptive writers of the last century would have considered the

awfulness--of the Llanberis Pass. The point of view has changed whilst

the century has been passing away. Where our great-grandfathers spoke

of "horrid scenes" we find nowadays glory of colour, and magnificence

of form, and all the finer characteristics of mountain beauty. But

something, after all, is to be said from the point of view of our

great-grandfathers. We travel through the Pass of Llanberis by coach on

good and safe roads, and they ventured, perforce, along "a horse-path

so rugged that much of it was like going up and down rough stone

stairs."

It was between the two lakes Peris and Padarn, and at the new village

of Llanberis, that the late Poet Laureate foregathered, in his youth,

with his friend Leonard, who sang of "all the cycle of the golden

year":--

"We crost

Between the lakes, and clambered half-way up

The counter side....

... and high above, I heard them blast

The steep slate quarry, and the great echo flap

And buffet round the hill from bluff to bluff."

The first recorded ascent of Snowdon seems to have been made from

the same spot in 1639. "At daybreak on the 3rd of August," says the

seventeenth-century mountaineer, "having mounted our horses, we

proceeded to the British Alps."

After the mountains, Dolbadarn Castle and Ceunant Mawr--the Waterfall

of the Great Chasm--are the principal attractions of Llanberis. The

cataract is upwards of 60 feet in height. It tumbles over a few

ledges, rushes down a wide slope, and falls into a pool below. The

castle is singularly well placed for picturesque effect. The one tower

now remaining occupies the whole of the surface of a rocky eminence,

which presents a precipitous front to the lake, and has a marvellous

background of high-peaked mountains. Often enough it can be seen only

through mists, or driving sheets of rain, for Llanberis seems to be the

home of the rain-cloud and the cradle of the storm.

An unspeakable lumber of waste slates stretches out into the lakes

as we proceed downwards, but does not interfere with the splendid

view of Snowdon which is to be obtained at the point where the Seiont

leaves Llyn Padarn. Wooded cliffs and heathery crags, and peeps of

wild moorland, and rugged country that is redeemed from desolateness

by frequent white cottages, make fine pictures for us as we proceed

down the river towards Carnarvon. Here and there the stream is divided

by great masses of stone, past which it races in order to drive some

watermill, half hidden in leaves. There are reedy pools, in which a

wild swan may occasionally be seen, and then willowy marshes; and so,

bending this way and that, now bursting into the open sunlight, and

then plunging into woodland shade, and always noisy and impetuous, the

little river hastens on until it joins the tide, issuing into the Menai

Strait between the grimly beautiful walls of Carnarvon Castle and a

wooded bank. Only as to its interior can the castle now be properly

described as a ruin. Restoration has here taken the form of rebuilding,

and this proud stronghold is now immeasurably more complete as to its

outward appearance than it can have been when Edward I. exhibited from

its walls the prince who, having first seen the light only a few hours

before, was "not only born in Wales but could not speak a word of the

English tongue."

Away from the castle and what remains of the walls, which, in

appearance, still to some extent justify the ancient name of "the fort

over against Anglesea," the town of Carnarvon is painfully modern;

but what there is of it that is really old conveys the impression of

mediævalism more completely than any other place in Wales, except,

perhaps, the old town of Conway. The walls of the castle, with their

numerous towers and turrets, rise up to a prodigious height above the

quays, at which little coasting vessels with red sails and gay streaks

of paint take in their cargoes of slates. The great gateway looking

out seaward has a loftiness and a massiveness which cow the spirit.

But the outlook hence becomes all the more beautiful by contrast

with this castellated gloom. Yonder is the Isle of Anglesea--the

sacred island--shimmering through a sunlit mist, and the Strait; with

sandbanks visible here and there, and flocks of sea-birds soaring and

dipping and screaming, is like a broad river, widening itself to its

utmost until it becomes impossible to distinguish between river and sea.

* * * * *

At the head of the Pass of Nant Francon, and behind the huge, dark,

threatening shoulder of Carnedd Dafydd, Llyn Ogwen stretches along for

about a mile or so, hemmed in at its further extremity by a low range

of hills. In Cumberland this lake would be called a tarn, as would also

Llyn Idwal, a sort of miniature Wastwater, which lodges in a hollow,

among deep and gloomy precipices, a few hundred yards to the left.

"This," wrote Leland, "is a smoule poule, where they say that Idwalle,

Prince of Wales, was killed and drounid."

"No human ear but Dunawt's heard

Young Idwal's dying scream,"

says the ballad in which the tradition is enshrined. The appearance of

the place may well have suggested either the legend in modern or the

crime in ancient days. In stormy weather the surroundings of the little

lake are inconceivably wild and forbidding, and the wind swirls about

in this hollow of the rocks until Llyn Idwal boils like a sea.

[Illustration: PASS OF LLANBERIS (_p. 205_).]

Ogwen is a lake of gentler and more serene aspect. At its foot, under

Carnedd Dafydd, where the coach-road crosses, its waters, with those

from Llyn Idwal, form the Falls of Benglog, so well described by an

older writer that his words shall be made to serve the purpose here.

"The highest Fall," observes Bingley, "is grand and majestic, yet by

no means equal to the other two. At the second, or middle, Fall the

river is precipitated, in a fine stream, through a chasm between two

perpendicular rocks that each rise several yards above. The mountain,

Trivaen, fills up the wide space at the top, and forms a rude and

sublime distance. The stream widens as it descends, and below passes

over a slanting rock, which gives it a somewhat different direction. In

the foreground is the rugged bed of a stream, and the water is seen to

dash in various directions among broken masses of rock." At the lowest

fall "the stream roars with great fury, and in one sheet of foam,

down an unbroken and almost perpendicular rock. The roar of the water,

and the broken and uncouth disposition of the surrounding rocks, add

greatly to the interest of the scene." And from these Falls of Benglog

one looks down the wide, treeless vale of Nant Francon, a broad, peaty

marsh, the bed of some ancient lake, as it would appear, hemmed in by

dark ridges of mountains.

[Illustration: CARNARVON CASTLE (_p. 206_).]

Throughout the whole length of Nant Francon the river /Ogwen/ is

a thin, quiet, winding, silvery stream, unsheltered by bush or tree;

but as it approaches the Bethesda slate quarries it is shadowed by

its first foliage, that seems designed to hide from it the gigantic

outrage on which was built the scattered and rather extensive town

of Bethesda, and which has made Lord Penrhyn one of the wealthiest

members of the House of Lords. Below the fine bridge leading to the

quarries the river is lost among deep woods; but, pursuing it further,

one comes most unexpectedly on a long and romantic series of cascades,

continuing until the Ogwen is lost to sight in a deep hollow filled

with mist and foam. The river has a beautiful and picturesque bend as

it passes behind the cottages of Bethesda, a mile or so lower down,

and thenceforward it becomes a river something like the Llugwy in

appearance, tumbling over short cataracts, or wandering deep among

woods, or emerging now and again amid pleasant green spaces, its banks

shaded by overhanging trees.

[Illustration: THE SWALLOW FALLS (_p. 210_).]

As Carnedd Dafydd, and its twin, Llewelyn, are left behind there comes

in sight the steep side and dark, rounded summit of Penmaenmawr, and

then, on an opposite and less conspicuous eminence, looking over Bangor

and the Menai Strait, and surrounded by woods in which the Ogwen is

for a while completely hidden, rises Penrhyn Castle, the seat of Lord

Penrhyn, with one great square, turreted tower dominating all the

country roundabout. Henceforth the river is little seen until it flows

out, through a deep ravine, on to the broad, sandy flats which stretch

from Bangor to Beaumaris, its short, swift, troubled life ending thus

in sunlit peace.

The steep mountain-sides which hem in Lake Ogwen at its foot are so

black, bare, rugged, and forbidding, as to suggest the skeleton of an

unfinished world. A kindlier scenery opens out beyond the head of the

lake, where the river /Llugwy/--the first of the tributaries

of the Conway which have now to be noticed--after wandering downwards

from a small mountain tarn under the shadow of Carnedd Llewelyn, runs

through a wild and fine pass to Capel Curig. The valley is hemmed in by

the great mountains, and to the south rise the three peaks of Y Tryfan,

with the Glyder-Fach in the hollow to its left.

At Capel Curig, where is Pont-y-Garth, the Llugwy is an inconspicuous

stream, but it grows wider, and its valley becomes very beautiful,

immediately after leaving that place, when it is joined by the waters

from the two small lakes which make the best of all the foregrounds

to Snowdon. Here is "a region of fairy beauty and of wild grandeur,"

as George Borrow says. Moel Siabod, "a mighty mountain, bare and

precipitous, with two peaks like those of Pindus, opposite Janina,"

here hides its sternness amid woods of oak and fir. Above the lakes,

all the peaks of Snowdon are in sight--Y Wyddfa, which is the summit;

Lliwedd, "the triple-crested"; craggy Crib-Goch, advancing itself

before the rest; and Crib-y-Ddysgyl. To the right of the valley, which

has Moel Siabod on its left, there is a curving range of rocky heights,

their harshness softened by bracken and dwarf shrubs, and beyond, and

high above, is the stony wilderness of the Glyder-Fach.

Afon Llugwy--_afon_ being the pretty Welsh word for "river"--flows

through one of the most beautiful of all pastoral valleys on its way

from Capel Curig to the Swallow Falls. Every bend of the stream,

every green, shady pool, every long stretch of rock impeded water has

appeared again and again on the walls of the great picture exhibitions;

for there is no river of Wales which is so much haunted by artists as

this which we are now following to its junction with the Conway. At

Pont-y-Cyfing--a modern bridge of a single tall arch--the river plunges

through riven cliffs, boils round enormous masses of rock, and then

tumbles over a bold cascade, to recover its quiet almost immediately;

but only to be again driven into turbulence where a pretty rustic

bridge strides across, to give unimpeded view of a succession of rapids

above and below.

The Llugwy dreams along through pleasant meadows and by quiet woods

before it comes to the famous Rhaiadr-y-Wennol (the Waterfall of the

Swallow). Whence, one is driven to ask, comes such a name as this? The

easy and the usual reply is that these are called Swallow Falls because

of the swiftness with which the water descends. But all waterfalls

are swift. The correct answer to the question suggests itself, as one

continues to gaze, through a mist of fine spray, when the river comes

down in an autumn flood. The ears deafened by the rush of the cataract,

the eyes dazzled and fascinated by the breadth and the mass of the

falling waters, a dim sense of something white, with black streaks

here and there, overpowers all other impressions. As the river sweeps

downward over the higher fall, it is broken and divided by dark pillars

of rock. Yes, that is the idea, certainly. What these Falls suggested

to the ancient inhabitants of Wales, to those who gave its name to the

Rhaiadr-y-Wennol, was the swift alternation between the white gleam of

the swallow's breast and the dark shadow of its wings, as it darted

to and fro between river and sky. George Borrow has a concise, vivid,

and fairly correct description of the Falls, which may be quoted here

because it is impossible to put the matter in fewer words. "First," he

says, "there are a number of little foaming torrents, bursting through

rocks about twenty yards above the promontory on which I stood; then

come two beautiful rolls of white water, dashing into a pool a little

above the promontory; then there is a swirl of water round its corner

into a pool below, black as death, and seemingly of great depth; then

a rush through a very narrow outlet into another pool, from which the

water clamours away down the glen."

[Illustration: MINERS' BRIDGE, BETTWS-Y-COED (_p. 212_).]

We have had the last sight of the mountains for a while when we enter

the little, rock-poised wood from which the Swallow Falls are to be

seen. The grand, solitary mass of Moel Siabod lies behind us, one

grey, far-away peak of Snowdon exhibiting itself over the lowermost

slope. Henceforth, almost to Bettws-y-Coed, the course of the Llugwy

is through a deep, rocky, and finely-wooded glen. It is Matlock on a

more magnificent scale. It is the High Tor repeating itself again and

again, in greater grandeur of scale, and with additional beauty of

surroundings. Wild nature is here clothed and softened by luxuriant

foliage, which towers up to the heights. The bare rock is visible only

where the river courses through the deep woods, which are to be seen

to most advantage from the Miners' Bridge, slanting far upward across

the river to the opposite slope--a bridge of rough sections of tree

trunk bound together, with a hand-rail of long boughs for security--a

bridge erected in an emergency, and for a temporary purpose, as one

might guess; a bridge of perilous slope, which has done good service to

more than one generation of miners, climbing up the hillside to their

daily toil.

[Illustration: _Photo: I. Slater, Llandudno._

MOEL SIABOD, FROM THE LLUGWY (_p. 211_).]

Of Bettws-y-Coed--"the Bede House in the Wood"--so much is known that

little needs in this place to be said. Here is Pont-y-Pair, and a scene

which painting has made more familiar than almost any other in these

islands. The bridge has been associated with the name of Inigo Jones,

but at least the base of the structure dates back to the fifteenth

century, being the work of a mason who must also have been a fine

architect, and who died, as it seems, before his work was complete. It

has four lofty arches, about which an ancient and gnarled ivy clings.

Below, when the water is quiet, one may see the trout dashing about

amid the pools. The river-bed is riven and torn, and full of craggy

masses. A rocky islet, on which clusters a most picturesque group of

fir trees, divides the accelerating waters, that now, after one final

battle with obstructions, sweep sharply round a curve, and shortly join

the Conway.

[Illustration: PONT-Y-PAIR.]

The valley of the /Lledr/ always presents itself to this present

writer's recollection as he beheld it first, at the end of a dry

summer, when the eye feasted without weariness on glowing colour, and

when every bend of the river opened up some piece of country which

was like one of Turner's glorious dreams. He saw it last on a day of

drifting rain. And in wet or in dry seasons the Lledr valley permits

of no comparison between itself and any other. It is incomparable in

its various beauty; it is unique in its power of attraction, in its

way of producing a satisfying sense of something wholly individual and

complete. High up towards Blaenau Festiniog it has little beauty; but

before the stream reaches Dolwyddelen Castle the real Lledr valley

begins, and is thenceforward down to the junction with the Conway a

perpetually changing scene of loveliness. Here again Moel Siabod, seen

in a new aspect, but always striking in form and noble in proportions,

seems to dominate the landscape. It may be seen from one impressive

point with Dolwyddelen Castle in the middle distance. This ruin is

the fragment of an ancient stronghold which derives all its present

importance from the beauty of its situation. A single tower occupies

the summit of a rocky knoll, and stands out clear against its misty

mountain background. Yet the castle was fairly large in its day,

occupying the whole surface of the hill. Here lived Iorwerth Drwyndwn,

whose fortune in battle gained him his surname of "the Broken Nose";

and here, too, Llewelyn the Great is said to have been born. At a later

day the castle became the residence of Howel Coetmor, a notorious

outlaw and robber chief, who so harried his neighbours that they sat

in church with weapons in their hands. A Roman road crossed the Lledr

at the village of Dolwyddelen, which is about a mile from the castle,

and there are still distinct Roman remains on the hill above the

village. But let no one, on that account, meditate on the ruins of

empires at the railway station which is called Roman Bridge, for the

road crossed the river at quite another place, and the bridge is of an

antiquity corresponding to that of the relic which was discovered by

the credulous hero of Sir Walter Scott's romance.

The Lledr wanders about its valley as if it were loth to leave. It

makes huge loops and bends, almost knotting itself sometimes into what

the sailors call "a figure of eight." The whole valley is a combination

of wildness and fertility, of wide prospects and confined glimpses of

sylvan beauty, of wooded hills and frowning crags and broken upland. In

rainy weather innumerable foamy streams swell the Lledr, until, in some

portions of its course, it seems to make a series of lakes. The oldest

bridge is Pont-y-Pant, not far from the entrance to the valley from

the direction of Bettws-y-Coed. Below this the stream hurries onwards

through woods and meadow-land, under mighty bluffs which are wooded to

their summits, and, issuing at length from its rocky barriers, adds to

the Conway a volume of water that is equal to its own.

The river /Machno/ falls into the Conway a mile or two beyond

its junction with the Lledr. It is a short river, drawing to itself a

number of little mountain streams, and its principal feature--but that

is of the first importance from the tourist point of view--round which

painters of landscape seem to encamp themselves all the year through,

the falls of the Machno, combines every element of what one may call

the ordinary picturesque. The river foams among crags and boulders,

and between rocky ledges, from which the trees hang dizzily, casting

deep shadows across the stream, and making green reflections in each

swirling pool. Then, too, there is Pandy Mill, making a sunshine in the

shady place, and a mill-wheel with a tumbling jet of water; and nature

seems to have lavished all its softer endearments on this exquisite

little scene, delighting the eye with tender arrangements of moss and

film-fern, and lichen and hoar boughs.

[Illustration: _Photo: Green Bros., Grasmere._

ON THE LLEDR.]

Not far below this pretty landscape cameo are the Falls of the Conway,

where the river rushes on through a gorge of dark, sloping, almost

columnar rocks, and then--divided by a tall crag, on which one or

two small bushes have contrived to grow--bends and plunges down two

steep descents to where a half-ruinous salmon leap brings to mind

the eminence of the Conway as a fishing river. And next, the Fairy

Glen! This is a genuine ravine, where the stream forces itself between

riven cliffs, and flows in deep, rapid streaks of peaty-brown water

among a wilderness of grey rocks, plunging downward, thereafter, into

a wild glen overhung by woods. The name of the Fairy Glen would seem

inappropriate enough to such a scene were it not that here, again,

Nature has thrown all manner of rustic decorations about this frowning

gorge. The sunlight, too, seems to fill the place in a strange, mystic

way, so that the lichen-encrusted rocks are seen through a kind of

blue, misty glamour, and there is a suggestion of rainbow colour over

all.

[Illustration: ANOTHER VIEW IN THE LLEDR VALLEY.]

From the road high above the Fairy Glen there is a fine prospect of the

mountains. Moel Siabod seems to have come nearer, and the far distance

is closed in by the Glyders, Tryfan, and the Carnedd Llewelyn range.

Down in the valley is the Llyn-yr-Afanc, or the Beaver's Pool, and

nearer to Bettws-y-Coed the river is crossed by the fine span of the

iron bridge which was built in the year of the battle of Waterloo.

The /Conway/ has no particular attractiveness as it passes

Bettws, where David Cox's famous signboard may still be seen at the

Royal Oak Hotel. It has here a green margin of meadow-land, which grows

broader as we proceed towards Llanrwst, a sweetly-placed little market

town, to which small vessels seem to have made their way in the last

century, for a sailor who penned a diary in 1769 wrote how "Llanrwst

is situated in a very deep bottom on the river Conway, betwixt Denbigh

hills and Carnarvon rocks, some of which appear to hang over the town.

Nevertheless, we found a much better anchorage than we could have

expected at such a bottom."

[Illustration: FAIRY GLEN, BETTWS-Y-COED.]

This sailor was an observing man, for he continues:--"Llanrwst is

a small market-town, containing one church, a market-hall, as they

call it, and about fifty or sixty houses, but never a good house

among the whole lot." There are some good houses nowadays, however,

and a fine stone bridge of three arches, with a peculiarly high and

graceful spring. Here, again, the design is attributed to Inigo Jones,

as, perhaps, ought to be the case in the immediate country of that

renowned architect. Gwydir Castle, the family mansion of the Wynns,

is a conspicuous object among the woods which here cluster under the

feet of the craggy Carnarvonshire hills. It has now passed, through the

hands of the Earl of Ancaster, whose forbears married with the Wynn

family, into the possession of the Earl Carrington. The founder of the

castle was Sir John Wynn of Gwydir, who represented Carnarvonshire

in Parliament in 1596, and whose soul is said to be imprisoned under

the Swallow Falls, "there to be punished, purged, spouted upon, and

purified from the foul deeds done in his days of nature." A truly

tremendous malediction! Some traces of the sixteenth-century building

still remain, but the present castle belongs to our own century, though

it contains carved work of the reigns of Elizabeth and James.

At Llanbedr, on the hills above the Llanrwst road, may be found one

of the most remarkable primitive fortifications that are to be seen

anywhere in these islands, Pen-Caer-Helen by name. "It was a British

post of great strength," says Pennant, "in some parts singularly

guarded. It had the usual fosses, and vast ramparts of stones, with

some remains of the facing of walls, and the foundations of three

or four round buildings." The remains are still very extensive, and

clearly indicate the extent of the ancient stone ramparts. It was a

post from which a very great extent of country could be surveyed. In

one direction you look over the Conway and the Denbighshire hills, as

far as the valley of the Clwyd; in another, the eye stretches over a

barren waste to the Carnedd Llewelyn range. The Great and the Little

Orme are in sight, and Puffin Island, and the sea.

[Illustration: ON THE CONWAY.]

The Conway is still navigable by small vessels as far as Trefriw, a

pretty village of small houses and neat villas, clustering under the

hill, and close to the coach road. Trefriw is renowned not only for

its situation, but for its "Fairy Falls," and its "spa," which, says

Mr. Halliwell-Phillips, yields "the nastiest chalybeate I ever had

the folly to taste." For some distance below Trefriw, the river, now

broader and much more deep, runs for a while between great masses

of tall reeds and sedge, and then opens out into a lake-like width,

with such a prospect of spreading water, and woods and mountain, as

recalls the characteristic beauties of Windermere. Very delightful

indeed is a voyage in the little steamer which plies between Deganwy,

Conway, and Trefriw; but it is at Conway Marsh that the river is at

its noblest. When the tide is out, this is a broad, sweeping, sandy

bay, with oozy spaces of bright green towards its centre; and when the

tide is full, it has the appearance of a large and beautiful islanded

lake. The river is walled in on the Conway side, and a thick wood

shadows the stream as it bends round towards the sea. It is here that

one of the most effective views of Conway Castle comes into sight,

with the two white bridges stretching over the narrowing channel, and

the great circular towers clustering together in such manner as to

convey a most formidable impression of massiveness and strength. One

naturally compares Conway with Carnarvon Castle. The two buildings

are said to have been designed by the same architect, and, of their

kind, they are among the finest in the world. Carnarvon Castle is more

elaborated in idea, more ingenious, more decorative, and in general

aspect more grand; but Conway suggests a greater antiquity, a more

solid strength, a sounder and more artistic unity of structure. It is

a mere ruin, having been dismantled in 1665. Even before that period

it seems to have been abandoned to time. There is a letter of James

I.'s reign which says that "the King's Castle of Conway, in the county

of Carnarvon, is in great ruin and decay, whereof the greater part

hath been downe and uninhabitable for manie ages past; the rest of the

timber supporting the roof is all, or for the most part, rotten, and

growth daylie by wet more and more in decay, no man having dwelt in

anie part thereof these thirty years past." There is no roof at all

now; the timbers are long consumed; the castle is gutted throughout;

and yet, as seen from the Conway river, the castle still has a certain

august and complete majesty, as if time could do it no real despite.

[Illustration: _Photo: I. Slater, Llandudno._

THE CONWAY, FROM CONWAY CASTLE.]

Conway Castle, with the Conway mountain, on which there is a British

fort, towering up in the rear, held complete command of the estuary.

It was an English, not a Welsh, stronghold, being built by Edward I.,

about 1284. Queen Eleanor is said to have lived there with the king,

and one of the towers has been named the "Queen's" tower in memory of

that event. The great hall, which was supported on vaults, was 130 feet

long by 32 feet broad. The castle was besieged in 1290 by Madoc, one

of the sons of Llewelyn, the English king himself being present on the

occasion. A fleet bringing provisions saved the garrison just as it

was being starved into surrender. When Bolingbroke landed in England,

and Richard II. found himself abandoned by his army, he fled here for

safety, and at this castle, it is averred, was his abdication signed.

Conway town, sloping swiftly down to the riverside, and almost wholly

enclosed within its many-towered walls, looks like a contemporary

illustration of Froissart. There is no other such perfect specimen of a

small mediæval walled town now remaining. The fortifications climb up

a steep hillside, in a triangular form--or rather, as has been said,

so as to make the figure of a Welsh harp. The highest point of the

triangle is so far above the other portions of the walls that the whole

has that quaint look of being out of perspective which is the most

pronounced characteristic of all mediæval draughtsmanship.

[Illustration: CONWAY CASTLE.]

Across the water, and on the way to Llandudno, the little town, or

village, or city of Deganwy half hides itself among the sands, just

above the verge of what was formerly, and even up to recent times,

a marsh stretching from opposite Conway to Llandudno Bay. It was

hereabout, but on the Conway side of the river, that the pearl-fishing

was carried on:--

"Conway, which out of his streame doth send

Plenty of pearls to deck his dames withal"--

says Spenser, in the "Faërie Queene." The pearl fishery had once a

real importance. Sir Richard Wynn of Gwydir presented to the queen of

Charles II. a Conway pearl, which afterwards adorned the regal crown.

This was probably of a kind that was found higher up the river, at

Trefriw. A more common variety was found in abundance on the bar,

and the collection of the pearl-bearing mussels was for a long time

a distinct and regular industry. "As for the pearls found in these

mountainous rivers," said a letter-writer of the seventeenth century,

"they are very plentiful, and uncommonly large, though few of them well

coloured. They are found in a large, black muscle, peculiar to such

rivers. Several ladyes of this county and Denbighshire have collections

of good pearle, found chiefly in the river Conway."

Deganwy, "the place where the white waves break upon the shore," was a

royal residence from a very remote period. It had a castle, which is

said to have been erected in the sixth century by Maelgwyn Gwynedd,

and to have been destroyed by Llewelyn the Great, whose statue is to

be seen in Conway town. "It was a noble structure," says Giraldus

Cambrensis, "and its possession was held to be of great importance

to the English, so that Randal Blondevil, Earl of Chester, rebuilt

it in 1210. King John encamped at Deganwy two years later, but was

compelled to retreat with his army before Llewelyn. There were other

royal retreats from Deganwy, before the fierce Welsh, in 1245, 1258,

and 1262. There were "great ruines" of the castle in Leland's time;

but now it is with difficulty that any fragment is discerned. Deganwy

itself has become a watering-place, a small rival to Llandudno, mainly

attractive because it presents a magnificent view of the estuary of the

Conway, and of the fine range of mountains which ends in Penmaenmawr."

Llandudno, for the most part, occupies the flat and formerly marshy

space between the Great and the Little Orme. It is altogether a

favourable type of the modern watering-place; but it need not detain

us here, for we have reached the point at which the river broadens out

into Conway Bay, and is lost among the in-rushing waves of the Irish

Sea.

[Illustration: THE BRIDGE, FROM CONWAY CASTLE.]

RIVERS OF NORTH WALES.

CHAPTER III.

THE CLWYD AND THE DEE.

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.

[Illustration: VIEW FROM RHUDDLAN CASTLE.]

[Illustration: RHUDDLAN CASTLE.]

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.

[Illustration: ST. ASAPH (_p. 227_).]

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.

[Illustration: _Photo: Catherall & Pritchard, Eastgate Row, Chester._

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.

[Illustration: _Photo: Carl Norman & Co., Tunbridge Wells._

BALA LAKE.]

[Illustration: VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY.]

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.

[Illustration: LLANGOLLEN.]

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.

[Illustration: _Photo: Hudson._

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.

[Illustration: THE ROODEE, CHESTER (_p. 239_).]

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.

[Illustration: THE DEE AT CHESTER, FROM THE WALLS (_p. 239_).]

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.

[Illustration: _Photo: Frith & Co., Reigate._

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.

[Illustration: SWING BRIDGE OVER THE DEE NEAR HAWARDEN (_p. 239_).]

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./

[Illustration: THE SANDS OF DEE.]

[Illustration: THE MERSEY AT STOCKPORT (_p. 244_).]

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.

[Illustration: THE MERSEY.]

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.

[Illustration: NORTHENDEN (_p. 245_).]

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.

[Illustration: ON THE IRWELL.]

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.

[Illustration: PENDLETON, FROM THE CRESCENT (_p. 246_).]

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.

[Illustration: MANCHESTER, FROM THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, SHOWING THE

CATHEDRAL, THE EXCHANGE, THE TOWN HALL, ETC.]

There are political as well as industrial features that cannot be

overlooked in any reference to the great seat of the cotton trade. A

statue of Cromwell in Victoria Street, standing on a rugged block of

granite, may be taken as a memorial of the strong stand Manchester made

for the Parliament in the Civil Wars of the seventeenth century. It was

in Manchester that the first blow in that struggle is said to have been

struck. Curiously enough, however, Manchester, in a moment of impulse,

declared for the Stuarts in the rising a century later. Its inhabitants

not only welcomed Prince Charlie in his march to the South, but went so

far as to proclaim him king. They changed their minds, however, almost

as quickly as they had made them up; and the Prince and his adherents

received but scant courtesy from the Manchester folk some two weeks

later while retreating northward. Agitation for Parliamentary reform

ran to fever heat in Manchester almost from the inception of that

movement, and had one lamentable incident--a charge by yeomanry at a

mass meeting in St. Peter's Field in 1819, when several persons were

killed. While deplorable in itself, this event, which has passed into

history as the "Peterloo massacre," was not without potent influence

in bringing in that better era for which the people of Manchester, in

common with the inhabitants of other large towns, were clamouring.

Where that memorable mass meeting took place now stands the Free Trade

Hall--a suggestive reminder of the fact that in Manchester the Corn Law

League, with Mr. Cobden, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Milner Gibson as leading

spirits, had its headquarters. In 1832 Manchester obtained the right

to send two members to Parliament, Salford getting one member. By the

Reform Bill of 1867 both boroughs got an additional representative; and

when, in 1885, the great towns were cut up into divisions, Manchester

had its Parliamentary strength increased to six members, and Salford to

three.

Long as it had to wait for Parliamentary recognition, it was still

later before Manchester secured the municipal powers to which by its

antiquity, its growth, and its business importance it was entitled.

Its charter of incorporation as a borough was not obtained until 1838.

Nine years later (1847) it was made a city, in the episcopal sense,

its collegiate church--"the one Paroch Church" Leland speaks of in

his "Itinerary"--ranking as the cathedral. It was six years later

still (1853) before the civic charter was obtained confirming what

had been done ecclesiastically. In 1893 another titular dignity came

to Manchester, its chief magistrate being then created Lord Mayor.

The cathedral, regarded as a parish church, dates from 1422, when it

was founded by Thomas de la Warre, who was doubly qualified for the

work he undertook, being not only lord of the manor but rector of the

parish. He founded a church, it is said, "as well for the greater

honour of the place as the better edification of the people"--hence

its collegiate character. Much has been done, with marked success,

to improve the appearance of the building since its elevation to the

dignity of a cathedral, and, architecturally and otherwise, it is well

entitled to the rank it now holds. Close to it is Chetham College, the

original residence of the Warden and Fellows of the old collegiate

body. Humphrey Chetham, the founder of this institution, was a dealer

in fustians in Manchester early in the seventeenth century. Before

his death he saw to the education and maintenance of a number of poor

boys of the town and neighbourhood, and by his will he left money to

continue and expand the good work he had begun.

A still earlier trust is the Grammar School, which goes back to 1515,

when it had as its founder Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter. The school

drew revenues from the mills on the Irk in the days when that stream

ran in limpid purity into the Irwell. It has a high reputation for

scholarship. Educationally Manchester owes much also to a citizen

of the present century--John Owens, who died in 1846, having left

£100,000, to which an equal sum was added for the foundation of the

college that bears his name. Manchester has thus been generously helped

in the matter both of elementary and of secondary education. And she

has had the further satisfaction of mounting the next step in the

ladder of learning, having obtained in 1880 a Royal Charter for the

founding of Victoria University, of which Owens is one of the colleges,

others being the Yorkshire College at Leeds and the University College

at Liverpool. Chetham College possesses a finely selected library of

30,000 volumes, housed in a picturesque range of old buildings. And

in this connection it is interesting to note that Manchester was the

first borough to take advantage of the Free Libraries Act. To-day she

has free libraries and reading rooms in every part of the city where

they seem needed, in addition to a great central reference library

containing about 200,000 volumes. Salford is equally well equipped in

this respect; and in both places technical training has kept pace with

other forms of instruction.

[Illustration: VICTORIA AND BLACKFRIARS BRIDGES (_p. 252_).]

With the exceptions named, the principal buildings of Manchester are

modern. The Victoria Buildings and Hotel, a palatial pile, now cover

what was one of the oldest parts of the city. The Town Hall, completed

in 1883, is a fine Gothic structure, occupying a triangular site. It is

really a municipal palace--imposing externally, and admirably adapted

internally for the conduct of the public affairs of a great city. The

rise and progress of the city has been pictorially treated in the great

chamber of the Town Hall by Ford Madox Brown. A wide open space known

as Albert Square fronts the Town Hall, with an Albert Memorial in the

centre, flanked by statues of John Bright and Bishop Fraser. Near by,

in St. Anne's Square, is a bronze statue of Richard Cobden. The Assize

Courts in Strangeways are as noble architecturally as the Town Hall,

and are from designs by the same architect, Mr. Alfred Waterhouse;

while the Royal Exchange, in Market Street, is a notable building in

the Italian style, possessing the largest meeting room of its kind

in the United Kingdom, but a room not too large for the demands made

upon its space, as visitors who attempt to inspect it on Tuesdays and

Fridays, the chief business days, will readily testify. Then there is

the Royal Institution, from designs by Sir Charles Barry, in the Doric

style, containing a gallery of paintings and a School of Design, with

a statue of Dr. Dalton, the propounder of the Atomic Theory, and a

Manchester worthy.

The Infirmary, built in the same style as the Exchange, dates from

the year 1755. The esplanade in front of it, where are statues of the

Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and Dr. Dalton, covers the site

of what was the "ducking pond" in Manchester in the days when the town

troubled itself less about the spread of enlightenment than it does

now. Like the Exchange, the Infirmary exists for the benefit of other

places than its own immediate neighbourhood. Some 30,000 patients are

treated annually within its walls. Its wards bear the names of various

benefactors of the institution, and one of the wings was built through

the beneficence of Jenny Lind, who gave two concerts for the purpose.

The reference to Jenny Lind suggests the fact that Manchester during

the present century has been distinguished as a musical centre. Nor has

she been backward as a patron of artists; her Art Treasures Exhibition

of 1857 brought together the finest collection of ancient and modern

paintings the provinces have known. The needs of the inhabitants, in

the physical sense, have also during recent years been well attended

to, as is shown by the open spaces made even in busy neighbourhoods,

and the parks and recreation grounds in the outskirts of both

Manchester and Salford. When the citizens feel disposed to travel far

afield, they cannot in these days complain of lack of facilities.

Having brought the sea to their own doors, they can go direct by boat

to almost every part. By rail they have choice of routes to all the

leading towns of the kingdom.

[Illustration: STEAMER PASSING THROUGH TRAFFORD ROAD SWING BRIDGE (_p.

254_).]

One may not be particularly pleased with what one sees of the Irwell as

it passes through the city, but it cannot be regarded as a hindrance

to free locomotion. It is bridged over in many places, so much so that

it is possible to get to and from Salford along most of the chief

thoroughfares of the larger town. The Victoria Bridge is modern, as its

name implies. Built two years after the accession of the Queen, it

replaced one erected in 1365, and which, from that period up to 1760,

was the only bridge connecting Manchester proper with Salford. A wooden

structure--built, it is said, by a theatrical company, to enable them

to pass between the two towns--preceded the present Blackfriars Bridge,

on the line of the street of that name. There are also the Albert, the

Regent, the Broughton, and other bridges. At Hulme Hall Road, where

the Medlock passes into the main stream, the Irwell loses itself in

the ship-canal. Here, too, is the entrance to the Manchester series of

docks, which cover the site of the old Pomona Gardens. They are in four

arms. The water space occupies 33-1/2 acres, and there is a quay area

of 23 acres, with two miles of quay length. On the opposite side lies

Ordsall, with a rectangular dock 980 feet by 750 feet, and with another

feature of interest in the great calico printing, dyeing, and bleaching

works of the Messrs. Worral. From here the canal curves round and flows

under a great swing bridge, said to be the largest in the country (it

is 265 feet long by 150 feet wide), forming part, when closed, of the

Trafford Road. To the right are the Salford Docks, and here the water

space covers 71 acres, with a quay area of 129 acres, and 4 miles

length of quayage. Just at the entrance to the Salford Docks the canal

is at its widest--1,388 feet.

A little further down is Mode Wheel, where are the locks that begin

the process of descent, the fall at this point being 13 feet. Here the

canal runs nearly west, and continues in this direction till it reaches

the outskirts of Eccles, where it begins to run due west through a

rock cutting that revealed in the exposed gravel, as the work was in

progress, the trend of flowing water in historic times. Beyond are the

Barton swing aqueduct and locks. The aqueduct which Brindley carried

over the roadway here for the Bridgewater Canal was at the close of

last century one of the wonders of the Manchester district. It had to

be demolished to give place to a still greater wonder of the kind. Not

only had a new aqueduct to be constructed to allow the ship-canal to

pass underneath, but it had to be made in such a form that it could

swing. This was done by forming the bridge portion of the aqueduct

into a caisson, or trough, some 90 feet long by 19 feet wide, and 6

feet deep, and weighing some 1,400 tons. Ordinarily, of course, the

water in the old canal is continuous, but when a ship is approaching

on the larger canal, double sets of gates are closed at each end of

the caisson, thus confining the water in the canal above and in the

caisson itself. The caisson is then swung round on a central pier,

on each side of which vessels may pass on the ship-canal. Below this

engineering triumph are the Barton locks on the ship-canal, giving a

fall of 15 feet. Here the new waterway takes a south-westerly turn, and

continues thus till it gets to Warburton. About midway between Barton

and the latter place, Irlam is reached, and here there are several

interesting features of the canal to be seen. To begin with, there is

another series of locks, giving a descent this time of 16 feet, with a

set of sluice gates in addition, which have been constructed to carry

off excess of water in times of flood--an expedient rendered necessary

by the fact that just below Irlam the Mersey runs into the canal. Here

also the Cheshire Railway lines cross the canal, and these had to be

dealt with so as to give a clear waterway of 75 feet above water-level.

About a mile below the weir at Irlam the canal widens out at the bottom

to 250 feet, to form the Partington coal-basin, thus allowing barges

and other vessels to be moored at the side, leaving the regulation

stretch of the canal for ordinary traffic. Elaborate arrangements are

made here to deal with the shipment of coal from both the Lancashire

and Yorkshire fields. Just below are the Cadis Head viaducts, carrying

the Cheshire lines over the canal, a work that involved much labour

to secure the desired gradients and the 75 feet above water-level. At

Warburton the roadway has been carried over a high level bridge, on the

cantilever principle. The town, which lies to the south of the canal,

is of some antiquity, and was the site of a Premonstratensian Priory.

Some little distance down, the river Bollin, coming northwards from

the neighbourhood of Macclesfield, falls into the canal on one side;

on the other, the Mersey is liberated, being now at the same level as

the canal itself. Here the Mersey begins to assume its most tortuous

course. It twists, bends, and doubles upon itself in a perplexing way,

affording a great contrast to the canal, which now runs straight as

an arrow all the way to Runcorn. In the course of its meanderings the

river comes down to the canal again at Thelwall Ferry, where it had

to be deviated for a short distance and made into a straight line. At

the end of the deviation it resumes its serpentine character, and here

and there accommodation canals run through it to give short cuts. In

another of its great bends the Mersey comes down to the canal again at

the point where Warrington is brought into touch with the new waterway.

Lying almost wholly to the north of the river, Warrington was anciently

approached by the south, by way of Latchford, and this route still

affords a principal means of access to the town, both by road and by

rail. The Mersey touches no part possessing a more remote history.

It has been claimed for Warrington that it is the oldest town in

Lancashire. It was the Veritenum of the Romans, and it figures in

Domesday as Wallingtun. Situated where there was ferryage over the

Mersey, and where at one time the river itself seems on occasion to

have been fordable, it practically was the key to Lancashire and

Cheshire on the west. As may be supposed, there was clashing of arms

frequently in its streets and on the road to the riverside. The

Botelers were lords of the manor here from the thirteenth century, and

they had, among other good things, right of toll on the ferry. The

first bridge was the result of a king's visit, and is said to have been

constructed by the first Earl of Derby for the better accommodation

of Henry VII. when that monarch was a guest at Lathom. With the

construction of the bridge the need for the ferry disappeared, and

so also did certain emoluments which fell to the lords of the manor,

whereupon a feud arose between the Botelers and the Stanleys that was

not settled without bloodshed. The bridge had another effect: it caused

large numbers of the population to change their quarters in order to

be nearer the stream, so that in the end the parish church was left

where Leland found it--"at the tail end of the town." It is no longer

there, of course, and no longer the only building of its kind, for

Warrington has grown with Lancashire generally, and the old church has

not been neglected. It has many fine Gothic features, including a spire

rising to 200 feet. Timber houses, suggesting the days of the old ford,

may be found in some of the streets, but Warrington is by no means a

place of the past. It is a very active, thriving community, numbering

60,000, and doing much business in the staple trade of the county, and

also in iron, steel, glass, leather, and soap.

[Illustration: THE OLD AQUEDUCT, BARTON.]

[Illustration: THE SWING AQUEDUCT, BARTON (_p. 254_).]

There are locks on the canal at Latchford giving a fall of 16-1/2 feet,

but as the water is now tidal the fall varies. The railway line had to

be cut through here by the canal, but in the meantime a new route was

made for the iron horse, including a massive viaduct, in the piers of

which some 12,000,000 bricks are said to have been used. Here, too,

as elsewhere, arrangements had to be made for road traffic, and in

this connection Latchford has been supplied with both a swing and a

cantilever bridge.

[Illustration: THE IRWELL AT ORDSALL, WITH WORRALL'S WORKS (_p. 254_).]