316 WILD FLOWERS OF 



Now I am a botanical hunter, and have had my 

 falls, taken my leaps, been wet to the skin many a 

 time, and received the grinning felicitations of my 

 friends! This is all right; I am myself no crying 

 philosopher (except when in a moody temper), I am 

 by no means afraid of a scratch, literally or metapho- 

 rically, seize the Rose with its thorns take the en- 

 joyment with its responsibility, as the Americans say ; 

 but as poets universally admit that there are flowers 

 wasting their sweetness on the desert air, it seems an 

 assigned duty to me to gather them. 



But where are we? I am perambulating the eastern 

 base of the mighty Breconian Van, or Cadair Arthur,* 

 and yet I see it not but as in a vision, for wreathed 

 in the cloudy folds of a tempest, its haughty brow is 

 involved in reeking vapour, which extends even to 

 the pebbly verge of the Usk it seems to stalk along, 

 a vast and awful cloudy pillar ! The opposing heights 

 of the valley are worthy of their name the Black 

 mountains, for with their summits turbaned by 

 rolling vapour, and their declivities black as midnight, 

 they frown terrifically upon the misty and obscured 

 waters of the lake Llynsavaddou, now wrapt in slum- 

 ber at their base. Thunder growls and echoes amidst 

 the hollows of the mountains, the clouds curtain the 

 sombre scene still more, and now as the moaning 

 wind creaks the old oak boughs, and pauses patters, 

 sweeps, and tumbles the descending deluge. But a 

 primitive Welsh cottage has sheltered me in its stony 

 vestibule, whose hospitable entrance could not very 

 easily exclude the " houseless stranger," as wanting 

 that barrier to intrusion known in English as a door ; 



* In Breconshire, about four miles south-east of Brecon. 



