It
was there that he called to his counsels Merlin, said to be
begotten on a hag by an incubus, but who was in reality the son of
a Roman consul by a British woman. It was in Snowdon that he built
the castle, which he fondly deemed would prove impregnable, but
which his enemies destroyed by flinging wild-fire over its walls;
and it was in a wind-beaten valley of Snowdon, near the sea, that
his dead body decked in green armour had a mound of earth and
stones raised over it. It was on the heights of Snowdon that the
brave but unfortunate Llywelin ap Griffith made his last stand for
Cambrian independence; and it was to Snowdon that that very
remarkable man, Owen Glendower, retired with his irregular bands
before Harry the Fourth and his numerous and disciplined armies,
soon however, to emerge from its defiles and follow the foe,
retreating less from the Welsh arrows from the crags, than from the
cold, rain and starvation of the Welsh hills.
But it is from its connection with romance that Snowdon derives its
chief interest. Who when he thinks of Snowdon does not associate
it with the heroes of romance, Arthur and his knights? whose
fictitious adventures, the splendid dreams of Welsh and Breton
minstrels, many of the scenes of which are the valleys and passes
of Snowdon, are the origin of romance, before which what is classic
has for more than half a century been waning, and is perhaps
eventually destined to disappear. Yes, to romance Snowdon is
indebted for its interest and consequently for its celebrity; but
for romance Snowdon would assuredly not be what it at present is,
one of the very celebrated hills of the world, and to the poets of
modern Europe almost what Parnassus was to those of old.
To the Welsh, besides being the hill of the Awen or Muse, it has
always been the hill of hills, the loftiest of all mountains, the
one whose snow is the coldest, to climb to whose peak is the most
difficult of all feats; and the one whose fall will be the most
astounding catastrophe of the last day.
To view this mountain I and my little family set off in a caleche
on the third morning after our arrival at Bangor.
Our first stage was to Caernarvon. As I subsequently made a
journey to Caernarvon on foot, I shall say nothing about the road
till I give an account of that expedition, save that it lies for
the most part in the neighbourhood of the sea. We reached
Caernarvon, which is distant ten miles from Bangor, about eleven
o'clock, and put up at an inn to refresh ourselves and the horses.
It is a beautiful little town situated on the southern side of the
Menai Strait at nearly its western extremity.
