After
Dinner I Trifled Agreeably With My Brandy-And-Water Till It Was
Near Seven O'clock, When I Paid My Bill, Thought Of The Waiter And
Did Not Forget Father Boots.
I then took my departure, receiving
and returning bows, and walking to the station got into a first-
class carriage and soon found myself at Bangor.
CHAPTER XLIII
The Inn at Bangor - Port Dyn Norwig - Sea Serpent - Thoroughly
Welsh Place - Blessing of Health.
I WENT to the same inn at Bangor at which I had been before. It
was Saturday night and the house was thronged with people who had
arrived by train from Manchester and Liverpool, with the intention
of passing the Sunday in the Welsh town. I took tea in an immense
dining or ball-room, which was, however, so crowded with guests
that its walls literally sweated. Amidst the multitude I felt
quite solitary - my beloved ones had departed for Llangollen, and
there was no one with whom I could exchange a thought or a word of
kindness. I addressed several individuals, and in every instance
repented; from some I got no answers, from others what was worse
than no answers at all - in every countenance near me suspicion,
brutality, or conceit, was most legibly imprinted - I was not
amongst Welsh, but the scum of manufacturing England.
Every bed in the house was engaged - the people of the house,
however, provided me a bed at a place which they called the
cottage, on the side of a hill in the outskirts of the town. There
I passed the night comfortably enough. At about eight in the
morning I arose, returned to the inn, breakfasted, and departed for
Beth Gelert by way of Caernarvon.
It was Sunday, and I had originally intended to pass the day at
Bangor, and to attend divine service twice at the Cathedral, but I
found myself so very uncomfortable, owing to the crowd of
interlopers, that I determined to proceed on my journey without
delay; making up my mind, however, to enter the first church I
should meet in which service was being performed; for it is really
not good to travel on the Sunday without going into a place of
worship.
The day was sunny and fiercely hot, as all the days had lately
been. In about an hour I arrived at Port Dyn Norwig: it stood on
the right side of the road. The name of this place, which I had
heard from the coachman who drove my family and me to Caernarvon
and Llanberis a few days before, had excited my curiosity with
respect to it, as it signifies the Port of the Norway man, so I now
turned aside to examine it. "No doubt," said I to myself, "the
place derives its name from the piratical Danes and Norse having
resorted to it in the old time." Port Dyn Norwig seems to consist
of a creek, a staithe, and about a hundred houses: a few small
vessels were lying at the staithe.
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