388 WILD FLOWEES OF SEPTEMBER, 



blood-red ravine lifts its angry ensign as a trophy in 

 mid-air, may we wander meditatively among the deep- 

 embowered paths of your denies, and retreat from 

 your storm-robed fastnesses in safety.* Now, then, 

 as the rising mists trail in serpent folds along the 

 shadowy vale Good Night ! 



* Just previous to my ramble in Monmouthshire, in the autumn of 1839, 

 after violent rain for some days, the saturated soil on the eastern declivity of 

 the Blorenge gave way, and a torrent of mud and water descended roaring in 

 the shades of night to the Usk below, violently tearing up the earth, over- 

 throwing trees, and scattering desolation over fertile fields. When I examined 

 the spot, the turnpike road, for some distance, had been converted into the 

 bed of a stream, rendered totally impassable, and obstructed by fallen trees, 

 that seemed to have been hurried along with the land on which they grew. 

 In a similar way the autumnal and winter torrents tear into the sides of the 

 sandstone mountains of Breconshire. The range of " Black Mountains," 

 passed on the road from Hay to Brecon, appear deeply gullied with furrows 

 down their bare precipitous sides, all red and grimy from the decomposing 

 sandstone of which they are formed, yielding 1 to the excavating force of tor- 

 rents swollen with continual rain, and giving to their profile the half-horrid 

 half-ludicrous idea of a giant's face furrowed with weeping ! 

 " For many a furrow on their time-worn cheeks 

 Has been the channel to a flood of tears." 



