"No one has hindered me hitherto. Wherever I have been in Wales I
have experienced nothing but kindness and hospitality, and when I
return to my own country I will say so."
"What country is yours, sir?"
"England. Did you not know that by my tongue?"
"I did not, sir. I knew by your tongue that you were not from our
parts - but I did not know that you were an Englishman. I took you
for a Cumro of the south country."
Returning the kind woman her book, and bidding her farewell I
departed, and proceeded some miles through a truly magnificent
country of wood, rock, and mountain. At length I came to a steep
mountain gorge, down which the road ran nearly due north, the
Conway to the left running with great noise parallel with the road,
amongst broken rocks, which chafed it into foam. I was now amidst
stupendous hills, whose paps, peaks, and pinnacles seemed to rise
to the very heaven. An immense mountain on the right side of the
road particularly struck my attention, and on inquiring of a man
breaking stones by the roadside I learned that it was called Dinas
Mawr, or the large citadel, perhaps from a fort having been built
upon it to defend the pass in the old British times. Coming to the
bottom of the pass I crossed over by an ancient bridge, and,
passing through a small town, found myself in a beautiful valley
with majestic hills on either side. This was the Dyffryn Conway,
the celebrated Vale of Conway, to which in the summer time
fashionable gentry from all parts of Britain resort for shade and
relaxation. When about midway down the valley I turned to the
west, up one of the grandest passes in the world, having two
immense door-posts of rock at the entrance. the northern one
probably rising to the altitude of nine hundred feet. On the
southern side of this pass near the entrance were neat dwellings
for the accommodation of visitors with cool apartments on the
ground floor, with large windows, looking towards the precipitous
side of the mighty northern hill; within them I observed tables,
and books, and young men, probably English collegians, seated at
study.
After I had proceeded some way up the pass, down which a small
river ran, a woman who was standing on the right-hand side of the
way, seemingly on the look-out, begged me in broken English to step
aside and look at the fall.
"You mean a waterfall, I suppose?" said I.
"Yes, sir."
"And how do you call it?" said I.
"The Fall of the Swallow, sir."
"And in Welsh?" said I.
"Rhaiadr y Wennol, sir."
"And what is the name of the river?" said I.
"We call the river the Lygwy, sir."
I told the woman I would go, whereupon she conducted me through a
gate on the right-hand side and down a path overhung with trees to
a rock projecting into the river. The Fall of the Swallow is not a
majestic single fall, but a succession of small ones. First 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 way above the promontory; then there is a swirl of water
round its corner into a pool below on its right, 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. Such is the Rhaiadr y Wennol, or Swallow Fall; called so
from the rapidity with which the waters rush and skip along.
On asking the woman on whose property the fall was, she informed me
that it was on the property of the Gwedir family. The name of
Gwedir brought to my mind the "History of the Gwedir Family," a
rare and curious book which I had read in my boyhood, and which was
written by the representative of that family, a certain Sir John
Wynne, about the beginning of the seventeenth century. It gives an
account of the fortunes of the family, from its earliest rise; but
more particularly after it had emigrated, in order to avoid bad
neighbours, from a fair and fertile district into rugged Snowdonia,
where it found anything but the repose it came in quest of. The
book which is written in bold graphic English, flings considerable
light on the state of society in Wales, in the time of the Tudors,
a truly deplorable state, as the book is full of accounts of feuds,
petty but desperate skirmishes, and revengeful murders. To many of
the domestic sagas, or histories of ancient Icelandic families,
from the character of the events which it describes and also from
the manner in which it describes them, the "History of the Gwedir
Family," by Sir John Wynne, bears a striking resemblance.
After giving the woman sixpence I left the fall, and proceeded on
my way. I presently crossed a bridge under which ran the river of
the fall, and was soon in a wide valley on each side of which were
lofty hills dotted with wood, and at the top of which stood a
mighty mountain, bare and precipitous, with two paps like those of
Pindus opposite Janina, but somewhat sharper. It was a region of
fairy beauty and of wild grandeur. Meeting an old bleared-eyed
farmer I inquired the name of the mountain and learned that it was
called Moel Siabod or Shabod. Shortly after leaving him, I turned
from the road to inspect a monticle which appeared to me to have
something of the appearance of a burial heap. It stood in a green
meadow by the river which ran down the valley on the left.
