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.

RIVERS OF NORTH WALES.

CHAPTER III.
THE CLWYD AND THE DEE.

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.

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:

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.

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—

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 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.

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:—

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.

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—

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.

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.

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—

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”:—

AARON WATSON.

THE MERSEY.

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.