The Roman amphitheatre consists of a grassy hollow enclosed by a bank, lying just outside the wall on the east; “Arthur’s Round Table” is a bank of earth some sixteen feet high. There is no reason to doubt that after the Roman era Caerleon became the centre of one of the British kingdoms. At a later time it was “threatened by the fleet of Alfred, which, however, was recalled home before making an attack. In early days it had its martyrs—St. Julius and St. Aaron—and afterwards it became the seat of a bishopric, which for some time enjoyed the honour of being the Metropolitan See of Wales. After the Norman Conquest Caerleon was a frequent bone of contention between the Welsh and the invaders, and was alternately taken and retaken. A castle was built here by one of the Norman barons; but it was not until the reign of Edward I. that the English obtained undisturbed possession of the town, which, prior to the building of a castle at Newport, was a place of considerable strategic importance.”[10]

By this time the Usk has become a tidal stream with a rapidly widening valley; and now it follows a devious course through rich meadows with wooded hills on either hand. A tomb in Christchurch, on the road connecting Caerleon and Newport, was long believed to have miraculous powers of cure for sick children who touched the sepulchre on the eve of the Ascension; and in 1770 as many as sixteen children were laid upon it to pass the night. Newport, four miles from the mouth of the river, owes its prosperity mainly to the great output of iron and coal from the interior of Wales that comes here for shipment. It has many railways to wait upon it, and its facilities in this kind have been greatly increased by the construction of the Severn Tunnel; and it is also furnished with abundant dock accommodation. Of the castle, built by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, a natural son of Henry I., to command the Usk, some of the walls and towers still remain, close to the famous bridge of five arches, reared at the beginning of the century and widened and improved in 1866; but the greater part of the stronghold has been either demolished or converted into business premises. The record of the town is, for the most part, one of peace and commercial development, and contains few episodes of violence, except the attack upon it by the Chartists led by John Frost in the year 1839. The tower of the church of St. Woollos, standing on an eminence overlooking the valley of the Usk and the Bristol Channel, is said by Wood to have been built by Henry III. in gratitude to the inhabitants of this place and surrounding districts, who, by a victory over his enemies, relieved him from captivity. Newport may not have great attractions to offer to the tourist, but in these later days it has not been mindful only of money-making, as one may see from the many public buildings with which it has provided itself.

RIVERS OF SOUTH WALES.

THE bold-headed, ruddy Brecknock Beacons and their neighbouring heights of the Fforest Fawr are, between them, to be held responsible for the nativity of three important streams of South Wales: the Taff, the Neath, and the Tawe. Not one of these streams is navigable, and they all have courses trivial enough compared with the Severn, the Usk, or the Wye. They are, however, quite strangely remarkable for their natural beauty, and for the scars on their beauty due to the mineral wealth of the valleys they drain. Nowhere in Great Britain is there more fascinating glen scenery or more sequestered and picturesque waterfalls than on the Neath and its tributaries. Yet Neath itself is a grimy town, and the river, which, ten miles to the north, wins admiration from everyone, here flows discoloured amid ironworks and coal mines, with all their ugly rubbish heaps. The Taff and the Tawe begin among heather and bracken, loftily and crystal clear; and they end alike, brown as canals in manufacturing districts, the one among the shipping of Cardiff, and the other in the blackest and most forbidding part of Swansea.

In all Wales there is no finer little group of mountain-tops than the Brecknock Beacons, as seen from the south. Pen-y-Fan, the highest summit, stands 2,910 feet above sea-level, and 500 feet less above the town of Brecon, some five miles to the north. The Beacons are an isolated society, separated by the Usk and its valley from the Black Forest Mountains east, and by the deep Glyn Tarel from the irregular mountain mass whence Tawe springs to the light. Their bases lie set among charming pastoral nooks. Above, they are good to see when autumn has made tawny the acres of their bracken; and at the summits they vie with each other in the redness of their precipices, that of Pen-y-Fan rightly winning the day with a sheer slide of rock some 600 feet deep, at an angle of about 70 degrees.

Many are the legends that animate the Beacons. Enough if we believe with certain of the bards that it was here, on Pen-y-Fan, that Arthur called his chivalry together, and initiated the Order of the Knights of the Round Table. In the land of the Red Dragon, centuries ago, there could be no higher dignity than to be associated with him who was to appear for the glory of Britain: “the lamp in darkness”:—

Having clambered, not without considerable exertion, to Pen-y-Fan, the traveller, if he feels thirsty, has but to turn his back to the north, face the distant smoke clouds above the hills of Merthyr and Rhymney, and walk a few yards down the western slope of the mountain. Here are two ice-cold springs, the parents of baby rivulets. Below you see how briskly these rivulets broaden and unitedly carry the pure water to the south. This is, in fact, one of the two main sources of the Taff. The other also is on the Beacons. The two streams, Taff Fawr and Taff Fechan (the “Great” and “Little” Taff), run parallel, in respective glens, among heather and rocks, for eight or ten miles, to join just above Merthyr. Pollution of all kinds comes to the stream as soon as it is thus fully entitled to be called the Taff.

Even before Merthyr is reached, Taff Fawr has learnt something of the pains and penalties of an industrial district. Ere it has run five miles from its source, it falls into the hands of the Cardiff Corporation. Its valley is here a characteristic mountain glen, with heathery solitudes on either side, and little clefts among the heather by which nameless affluents bring their pure tribute to the main stream. Houses there are none. But of a sudden, in all this loneliness, you come to a huge dam built and building across the valley from east to west, and beyond you perceive the goodly lake of which the rising dam is to be the mighty northern boundary.

Of all the large manufactories round Merthyr, those of the Dowlais Steel and Iron Works, two miles away (a constant ascent), are the most considerable. One may doubt, perhaps, if these are now the largest of their kind in the world, but they are still very extensive. A recent report tells us that they consist of eighteen blast furnaces, producing about 700 tons of iron and 2,400 tons of steel rails per week, and that their collieries can lift 3,700 tons of coal daily. Founded about a hundred and fifty years ago, they have been a staff of life to millions. Few sights of the kind are more impressive than the manipulation here of the huge cruses of molten steel, and the methodical treatment of the ores, which develop in a few hours into red-hot steel rails from thirty to sixty yards long; or than the cutting of these substantial rails into sections by a serrated disc which makes some 1,600 revolutions a minute.

Pontypridd deserves particular mention for the famous bridge which gives it its name. In the words of a specialist, this bridge “is a perfect segment of a circle, and stretches its magnificent chord of 140 feet across the bed of the Taff, rising like a rainbow from the steep bank on the eastern side of the river, and gracefully resting on the western—the beau idéal of architectural elegance.” It is the supreme achievement of a local stonemason named Edwards, who, a hundred and fifty years ago, devoted himself to the construction of bridges much as a mediæval artist devoted himself to the Madonnas of his canvases or to his crucifixes. South Wales owes much to Edwards the bridge-builder: we shall meet with his work on the Towy and the Teifi as well as here. In 1755 this “beau idéal of architectural elegance” showed to better advantage than now, when it is surrounded by the common buildings of a mining town; but it was never more useful than at present.

Hence, now wide in a shallow bed, and now narrow and rushing deeply between high banks, gaily wooded in places and mere refuse-heaps in others, Taff speeds towards Llandaff. Three or four miles ere it comes to this tranquil spot, a striking crag is seen on its left bank, with glorious beech woods clothing the steep red slopes of the rock. This is an historic spot: Castell Coch, or the Red Castle. It is such a site as in Rhineland would at one time have given a robber-baron a superb base for his depredations. As such, in fact, it was utilised. We read how, in 1158, Ivor Bach of Castell Coch descended upon Cardiff Castle and carried off the Earl and Countess of Gloucester as prisoners: the event is set forth on canvas in the Cardiff Town Hall. Nowadays the turret that rises above the topmost trees of the crag tells of other exploits. Castell Coch belongs to the Marquess of Bute, and it is here that the wine is grown which, in the opinion of some, is convincing proof that England might, if she would, become a viniferous country. In the Cardiff Exhibition of 1896 a stall was devoted to the sale of Castell Coch wines.

But the graceful spire and tower of Llandaff soon appear, in the midst of green meadows and lofty old trees, to tell of yet other aspirations, with the myriad houses of expanding Cardiff beyond. Its name describes it: Llan-ar-Daf, “the church on the Taff.” It has been spoken of “as the most ancient episcopal see remaining on its original site in Great Britain.” The old records go far to acclaim Llandaff as both venerable and ancient. Lucius, the great-grandson of Caractacus, in the second century A.D., endowed, we are told, four churches from the royal estates, one being Llandaff. A bishop of Llandaff is also said to have died a martyr in the Diocletian persecution. And yet, with such high associations, forty years ago this cathedral was the most desolate and neglected in the land. As it stands, it is eloquent of the whole-hearted labours of two men, chiefly: Dean Conybeare and Dean Williams. Previous to 1857, the cathedral was a picturesque ivied ruin of Perpendicular tower and Early-English roofless walls, with a ghastly eighteenth-century conventicle absorbing what is now half the nave and the east end of the building. The grand old Norman doorways south, north-east, and west, and also the tower, seemed to have outlived their vocation; and the Norman arch of the interior, above the present altar—perhaps the finest thing in Llandaff—was plastered up and totally expunged. The present cathedral owes its origin to the Norman bishop Urban (1107–33), who was dissatisfied with the church—28 feet long, 15 feet broad, and 20 feet high—to the throne of which he had been raised; and its remarkable restoration to the Llandaff architect, John Pritchard, of recent times. It can no longer be described as, by Bishop Bull in 1697, “our sad and miserable cathedral.” Alike within and outside it satisfies by its beauty and good order. The old and the new are well blended here.

As a village, Llandaff is now hardly aught except a flourishing suburb of Cardiff. Still, it keeps its individuality, and declines to be incorporated with the great invading town. The remains of the old episcopal palace and the old market-cross consort amicably with the one or two single-storeyed thatched cottages of the village square. The palace gateway has quite a baronial look, but it leads to nothing of particular interest. Bishopscourt, the modern palace, is a more cosy residence than that built by Bishop John de la Zouch early in the fifteenth century, of which this gateway is the most conspicuous relic.

One cannot conscientiously say that there is much of romantic or even artistic interest in this thriving town—the castle, with its Asiatic richness of decoration, apart. But the place is at least interesting, in its acres of docks, its prodigious machinery for the control of water-power and for the lading of vessels, and even its long ugly road of mean houses connecting it with the town of Bute Docks. This last is a cosmopolitan district. Coal is in demand everywhere, and it is pre-eminently coal that Cardiff thrives on. In 1849, only 162,829 tons of it were exported hence; in 1895, the amount was 11,067,403 tons. One of the astonishing sights of the Docks is to see a railway truck full of coal lifted by machinery as easily as if it were a penny loaf, emptied into the hold of a ship, and then, in less than a minute, be succeeded by another truck.

Cardiff has every incentive and determination to go ahead. St. Mary’s, the main street, can boast of costly banks and hotels and a very great deal of traffic. It is singularly noisy at night; and that also, we presume, is evidence of the strong modern spirit of the place. The town in 1896 indulged in an Exhibition on such a scale that its loss may be computed in scores of thousands of pounds; but the Exhibition was an investment, and it is a proof of Cardiff’s wealth that it can afford thus to cast expectantly so many thousands upon the waters. The Marquess’s castle is as unique in its splendour as is Cardiff among Welsh towns in its development. Of its external towers, one, the Clock Tower (with many quaint, arrangements for spectacular effect), is as modern as the residential part of the building. The other, or Black Tower (though it is of white limestone), dates from early times. It is also known as the Duke Robert Tower, because it was here that Robert Duke of Normandy was, by his own brother, Robert of Gloucester, son of Henry I., confined for many years.

The river NEATH, like Taff, rises among lonely mountains, heather, bracken, and the bracing winds of the uplands. The three summits of the Fforest Fawr range—long-backed ridges, woeful to be lost upon—each give names to the tributaries that flow from them, and at Pont Neath Vaughan form the Neath river proper. Y-Fan-Nedd, Y-Fan-Llia, and Y-Fan-Dringarth thus beget the Little Neath (the “dd” in Welsh being equivalent to our “th”), the Llia, and the Dringarth. The two latter, after about five miles of independence, join just above Ystradfellte, where another Castell Coch reminds us that Wales had long ages of intestine and other strife ere she gave up unfurling the Red Dragon on her hilltops. We are here in the “fiery heart of Cambria,” where the rocks and morasses were such mighty fastnesses for the brave Welshmen of old. But these times are long past, and Cambria’s fiery heart may now be said to depend literally upon the fuel in the bowels of the land.

There is little of exceptional interest in the upper reaches of the Neath’s tributaries. Maen Llia, or the Stone of Llia, is a huge boulder of granite some eleven feet high by the Roman road of Sarn Helen, which, far up near the source of the Llia, crosses the mountains with the recognised audacity of a Roman thoroughfare. But few are the wayfarers, other than reckless tramps, who set eyes on this one among the many monoliths that decorate Wild Wales. It is at Ystradfellte that the wonders of the Neath’s scenery begin. This little village stands more than 900 feet above the sea-level, and the Mellte (as Llia and Dringarth conjoined are named), in its fall of nearly 500 feet in the five miles between Ystradfellte and Pont Neath Vaughan, is a succession of pictures so lovely, and yet so confined, that they excite as much admiration as despair in the mind of the artist who comes to paint them. The Little Neath runs parallel with the Mellte during this course, separated from it by a high ridge, and scarcely a mile apart. This stream also gallops in a rocky bed, with soaring woods on both banks, and with waterfalls here and there of much beauty. But the Mellte and its two affluents, the Hepste and the Sychnant, quite put the Little Neath in the shade in this respect. You may see it for yourself, and also judge by the opinions expressed without reserve by the many colliers and their families who come hither, on picnic bent, from Hirwain and even Merthyr, over the high eastern hills. The Vale of Neath would be accounted a wonder if it were in Middlesex. But its remoteness keeps metropolitan tourists aloof; its charms are for the local colliers, and few besides.

The Cwm Porth, or “river cavern,” a mile below Ystradfellte, is the first of the Mellte’s marked eccentricities. The combination of rocks and water and wood, with the added element of danger in exploring this rugged, echo-haunted perforation in the cliff, are attractive in the extreme to the able-bodied traveller. Mellte, in time of flood, carries a deal of amber-tinted water in its rocky bed, and Cwm Porth is not in the hands of a company who charge for admittance, and guarantee smoothed paths, and ropes and handrails where there is a risk of broken limbs. This, indeed, is just the best of the Mellte: you feel as if you are on virgin soil while scrambling at a venture in its steep woods, now on the edge of the roaring little stream fifty feet sheer above a waterfall, and now midway in the river itself, perched on a rock, with vistas of boisterous water up and down, and the river’s banks, wooded to the sky-line, hundreds of feet on either hand, at an angle of forty-five or fifty degrees. The writer, on one memorable September afternoon, was for hours alone in these woods, passing from waterfall to waterfall, more by instinct than sure guidance, with the gold and bronze and crimson of foliage constantly betwixt him and the blue autumnal sky; nor did he see sign of other human being than himself, nor more than one white farmstead, when he climbed above the topmost trees and returned to the bleak and bare uplands beyond. The squirrels ran from bough to bough, the birds chirped in the infrequent grassy glades, where the sunlight made a bright spot in the midst of this dense, damp shade, and the waters filled the glen with their clamour. In all England there is nothing of its kind so admirable as the seclusion and beauty of this gorge of the Mellte, with its tributary, the Hepste, to the east.

Categorically, the chief waterfalls may be mentioned thus: the Clun Gwyn Falls—Upper, Middle, and Lower—and the two Falls of the Hepste. One cannot describe such things; each of these five has such individuality and beauty that on seeing it you prefer it to the others. Their framing is perfect. Even the heron that gathers up its long legs and whips across the stream out of your way is not wanted to complete your satisfaction in such pictures. Yet in a three miles’ flight a crow would reach coal mines and swart heaps of such refuse as you would not dream could lie within scores of miles of these divine solitudes.

The great Cilhepste Fall, otherwise Ysgwd-yr-Eira (the Spout of Snow), though the best known of the valley’s cascades, is, in the writer’s opinion, the least convincing. The water is tossed in one curve over a ledge of rock, and falls about 45 feet into a basin, whence it moves downwards to the far finer succession of furious white steps known as the Lower Hepste Falls. The woods in autumn clasp it amphitheatrically with their green and gold. There is no fault anywhere. There is also this added eccentricity: you may walk under the Fall from one side of the river to the other. The writer did it in time of heavy flood, and was soaked for his pains. Afterwards he clambered, not easily, down to the Lower Falls, the disarray of which was much more to his taste. The Ysgwd-yr-Eira would please more if it had a flaw. As it is, it looks as if Nature and man had conspired to make a cascade with surroundings that should be a model of their kind. Yet even this criticism—which may well be held to be of the bilious order—will by most be regarded as highly flattering to the Spout of Snow.

After the Mellte, one is not profoundly stirred by the Falls and sylvan graces of the Little Neath and its tributary, the Perddyn. Yet, they, too, are beautiful, especially the cascades of Scwd Gwladys (the Lady’s Fall) and Scwd Einon Gam (Crooked Einon’s Fall), in the latter stream.

The Sychnant, however, is a sensational little river. It joins the Mellte at the foot of a rocky precipice, Craig Dinas, which, even with its mere 170 feet of perpendicular rock, may be warranted to yield a thrill. From the grassy, hawthorned summit of Craig Dinas, one may peer into the deep-cut bed of the Sychnant, where this cleaves through the mountains from Hirwain, and also see its brace of waterfalls. But the glen is well-nigh impassably dense with undergrowth and trees, and bound about with precipices as emphatic, though not as high, as Craig Dinas. Where the Sychnant comes to the light from this dark embedded dingle, it is sadly spoiled by quarry men and others. But even these enterprising gentlemen will fight shy of its higher recesses, especially as they have nothing to gain by the intrusion.

Point Neath Vaughan is a snug little village, with none of the airs it might assume in pride of its position as key to the glories of these glens of the Neath. Its inns are homely, modest buildings. South, for the ten or twelve miles to the sea, the river Neath flows through a broad and lovely valley, with wooded or bare mountains on both sides. From Cefn Hirfynydd (west) and Craig-y-Llyn (east) many a dashing little stream, with miniature cascades, makes great haste to swell the main river. But collieries are here, as well as fascinating scenery, and it is impossible to overlook them and their smoke.

The town of Neath neither gives to nor gains from its river much distinction where this moves through its midst, brown, and with tidal mud on its banks. It is a colliery town, pure and simple, surprisingly furnished with public-houses. The fragments of its castle that survive are pent about by dismal slums, so that a man must have a very keen antiquarian sense to discover them. Nor are they much when found: just a gateway with its towers, the whole prettily hugged by ivy. Richard Grenville, of Bideford, who founded it in the twelfth century, would not care to see it now.

Hence to the much more grandiose ruins of the Cistercian Abbey of St. Mary and the Holy Trinity, which also owed its origin to the same Richard Grenville, is a walk of a mile or more—not a rural walk, by any means. You may, if you will, take a tram-car thither, with collier-lads or their womenfolk for your companions, and with black mud on the roadway. The ruins stand close-girt by canals and mines and ironworks. Leland describes the abbey as, in his day, the fairest in Wales; and in the year 1500 its glories, and especially the sweetness of its convent bells, were bardic themes. Never was there so abject a change; and yet, after the Dissolution, when it fell to the lot of Sir Richard Cromwell, nephew of Henry VIII.’s minister and great-grandfather of Oliver, it was for long an appreciated residence. The white stone mullions of the many windows of the parts of the abbey added by Sir P. Hoby, in 1650 or so, still gleam against the dark gritstone of the walls.

In spite of its sordid surroundings, however, Neath Abbey is not despicable. The area of its ruins impresses; the jagged towering ends of the ivied walls of its church, with daws croaking about them, and the long-desolate aisle, tangled with coarse grass and brambles, are also impressive. The ecclesiastics who sleep in Neath Abbey may be said to lie fathoms deep under the accumulated soil. Not a trace of one of them remains above the surface. The dark refectory of their convent, with its pillared roof, stands pretty much as it did in the sixteenth century, and of itself would dignify the ruins. But echo alone feasts in its damp, sombre hall. One remembers that it was here our Edward II. sought shelter after his evasion of Caerphilly Castle, and that it was a Neath monk who betrayed him into that terrible custody of Berkeley Castle, where death awaited him; and, remembering this, one is inclined to be sentimental, and to talk about the curse that broods over the Neath Abbey ruins. In truth, however, smoke is the main brooder here.

The river Neath glides on to its estuary by Briton Ferry, some two miles distant from the town. Hills escort it right to the sea—not all with smoking chimneys on them. The town is indeed quite uniquely hemmed round with beauty, as well as ugliness. Up the valleys of the Dulas and the Clydach, slim streams which join the Neath near its mouth, are nooks and recesses as winsome as those of the Mellte itself; and once on the tops of the mountains, in any direction, the pedestrian may readily forget coal and iron.

It is but seven or eight, miles from Neath to Swansea, where the TAWE comes to its end, foully enough, amid ironworks and “coalers.” One may, for convenience sake, make the journey, and later rise with the river to its source. There is more satisfaction in seeing it gradually purify than in watching its progress from pellucidity to pollution; from the sweet-aired heather hills where Adelina Patti has fixed her quiet home, to the sulphureous atmosphere of Landore and Hafod.

Sweyn’s Ea (Sweyne’s Eye or Inlet), Aber Tawe—or Swansea, as we modern English call it—is not what it was when Sweyne the King and Rover was wont to come hither as a base for his forays into the vales of South Cambria. Still, it can, if it cares to, brag stoutly of its ancient enlistment in the service of carbon. In 1305 it received a charter from William de Brews (Breos), great-grandson of the famous Lord Marcher, “to have pit coal.” That was beginning an industrial career early indeed. Four centuries later, in 1709, its jurisdiction as a port extended from Oxwich, in the Gower peninsula, to Chepstow—of course, including the then unborn and unthought—of Cardiff. It began to smelt copper in 1564, thanks to a charter given by Queen Elizabeth; and it is to copper and shipping, quite as much as to its position at the mouth of a great coalfield (estimated still to hold 19,200,000,000 tons of fuel underground), that Swansea owes its fine fortunes and its population of about a hundred thousand.

It seems an ungracious thing to say, but Swansea is apparently somewhat hampered by its antiquity. In the struggle for supremacy with Cardiff, it has not had Cardiff’s free hand in the matter of laying out a new town; nor, one may add, quite that powerful vigour of youth which carries all before it. Hence, it has already been left behind. The Duke of Beaufort is not such a potentate in Swansea as the Marquess of Bute in Cardiff; yet he stands to this city somewhat like the Marquess to Cardiff. It was a Duke of Beaufort who cut the first sod of the North Dock, or Town-Float, in 1852; and his Grace has large representation in the Swansea Harbour Trust, which has charge of the city’s port affairs. The late Lord Swansea, speaking on behalf of this Corporation, once said: “Swansea, you may depend upon it, is destined to become the Ocean Port of England.” Cardiff, at any rate, laughs such words to scorn, and even a layman of England may be allowed to think the prophecy over-sanguine. The North Dock has an area of 14 acres, and is “connected with a half-tide basin of two and a half acres by a lock 160 feet long and 50 feet wide, having at its seaward entrance gates of 60 feet, with a depth of 23 feet over the sill at spring-tides and 16 feet at neaps.” This is, of course, but one of Swansea’s docks, and by no means the most important of them. Cardiff’s docks are undoubtedly finer than Swansea’s, with more gigantic fitments.

Swansea, though ancient, possesses few relics of its past. The castle tower, in the main street, with a clock set in it, is the chief of them. In the large hall of the Royal Institution of South Wales—one of Swansea’s many meritorious establishments—may be seen divers drawings and engravings of the city one, two, and three centuries ago. In all of them the castle towers stand up as if they still had the feudal faith strong in them. Green, pleasant, wooded hills form the invariable background. How changed the landscape now! The green hills are gone; cut bare and covered with mean mechanic tenements or smoking manufactories. On the summit of the most conspicuous of them are a few gaunt walls, which by night may, with the help of a glamorous moon, come near being deceptively picturesque. This is the so-called Morriston Castle, three miles north of the city, yet with the black suburb of Morriston at its feet, an active contributant to Swansea’s fortunes. The “castle’s” history is brief and ignominious. A hundred years ago Sir John Morris, a maker of tin plates, who gives his name to the suburb, erected a lofty and large building on this breezy hilltop, for the accommodation of four-and-twenty of his workmen and their families. Healthier homes these could not then have had within easy reach of their daily labour. But the gradient of the hill soon wore out their enthusiasm, and, one by one, the families moved down on to the level. Then the lodging-house, being abandoned, fell slowly but surely into ruin. The ruin is now Morriston Castle.

Swansea’s castle has a more conventional history. It was built in its final form (which can only be conjectured from its remains) by Bishop Gower of St. David’s, in the fourteenth century. After the usual vicissitudes of disestablished castles, it still, until 1858, offered its dungeons for the confinement of recalcitrant debtors. In that year even these privileges were taken from it, and, ever since, civilisation has tried to crowd it out of existence. Its body is lost in the various buildings and workshops that have encroached upon it, but the graceful arcaded clock-tower remains. It gives a pretty touch to Swansea’s main street, which it commands.

Little more can here be said about Swansea, except that the visitor owes it to himself to leave the city (which was made a suffragan bishopric in 1890) as soon as possible, and make friends with the Mumbles. The five-mile curve of bay thither has been compared to that of the Bay of Naples. The comparison is not a modest one. Nevertheless, there is something uncommonly exhilarating about this Swansea Bay, with the red and white green-topped cliffs of the Mumbles at its south-western horn. You soon get out of reach of the fumes of the city’s copper and other metal works. The shipping of the Mumbles has a nice clean look after that at the mouth of the Tawe. And, save when the wind is north-east, the air is sweet here, as it is bound to be. Mumbles—or Oystermouth, as it used to be called—has an attractive old castle of its own, of the Decorated period. But it is precious chiefly to Swansea for its sea and the lighthouse islets at the extremity of the headland. The view hence towards the busy city, less than four miles across the water, is not gay. Tall chimneys and a dense canopy of smoke: such is the Erebus you behold from the pleasant Mumbles cliffs.

Ere moving up Tawe’s valley, it seems quite worth while to tell of Swansea’s connection with the fortunes of John Murray, the publisher. Gower the poet, Beau Nash, and other celebrities, owed their birth to this city; and it was while living here in 1806 that one Mrs. Randell compiled the “Domestic Cookery,” for which John Murray paid her the solid sum of £2,000, and which, Dr. Smiles tells us, was very profitable to the young publisher, and helped in a great measure to establish his position. It may be added, also, that in the parish churchyard at the Mumbles lies the Dr. Thomas Bowdler who busied himself so strenuously with Shakespeare’s Plays, and gave to our dictionaries an awkward, ugly word.

Morriston has already been noticed for its “castle.” It deserves a word also for its bridge over the river. This bears the look of one of Edwards’s constructions; its eyelet holes and graceful single curve remind one of Pontypridd. From Morriston to Ystradgynlais, Tawe is continually trammelled. In one part there is a cañon of slag heaps half a mile long for it to descend through. It is here shallow, and not more tainted than you would expect. The hills rise in high long banks on the outer boundaries of the valley, with wooded reaches above the lofty collieries, and crowned by the naked rock. Just south of Ystradgynlais the river receives its chief affluent, the Twrch, which has as bright and lengthy a youth as Tawe itself, rising under the Carmarthen Van, the rival peak of this Fforest Fawr range, which makes so commanding a mark on the two counties of Brecknock and Carmarthen.

The ascent here begins to be steep, and it is constant to the source. The colliery villages become less and less assertive, and the woods greener. By Coelbren a little stream hurries to the Tawe through one of those deep, thickly-treed glens which the Neath river knows so well. It is an enchanting spot, with the blue and green and russet of Craig-y-Nos across the valley to the north-west. The river gets quite near to the palace of our sweetest singer, whose conservatories can be seen gleaming for miles. In South Wales Patti holds a court other than that assured to her in all the world’s capitals. She is at home here. Her photographs are in the shop-windows of Neath and Swansea, and so are the photographs of the various luxurious rooms of her mountain palace; and she is praised for other virtues than those that proceed from her entrancing throat. People wonder how she can isolate herself here, where collieries are not so remote that they cannot be seen. But that is Adelina Patti’s affair, and has nothing to do with us. She is queen of the Tawe valley, in one sense, as well as the world’s queen regnant of melody. At Craig-y-Nos, which is 700 feet above sea-level, Tawe is distant only five or six mountainous miles from its origin. It begins, like the Taff, with numerous slender rills from red cuttings in the stony sides of the bleak uplands, all hurrying together, as if anxious to compose a little strength with their divided weakness. But its chief source is the lonely tarn (to borrow the North-country word) of Lly-Fan Fawr, which never fails to keep it active. This is on the Brecknock Van. On the Carmarthen Van also there is a lake, Lly-Fan Fach, some two miles from the source of Tawe. From Lly-Fan Fach comes the Sawddy, one of the Towy’s band of tributaries, which enters that river at Llangadock.