190 HOURS AMONG THS ROCKS AND CLOUDS. 



effort on my own behalf, but, unpleasant as it was thus to linger, I felt that it 

 was more dangerous to stir, where one incautious step might plunge me into 

 endless night. I sat, therefore, surely in suspense of no enviable kind, till, after 

 long lapse, a sound, hoarse as a huge branch sundered by the gale, came upon 

 my ear as if toiling up the precipice. — It was repeated like a stone bounding again 

 and again upon the hollow ground, but came up to me faint as a distant echo ! 



It was more like a summons to execution than a note of encouragement, but 

 I shouted answer, and prepared to obey its summons. It was no easy task. 

 Loaded with my cloak and folio of plants I approached the precipice. It was all 

 slippery with moisture, and there was no certain footing upon the friable rock^ 

 while the depth of the gulph into which I was lowering myself it was impossible 

 to fathom. A prill wept down the face of the dark cliff, and at some distance 

 below had scooped itself a deep gullet down which the water, as it gathered and 

 gained an impetus, foamed and gurgled, and fretted and bounded. Letting my 

 folio speed its way as it best could, I called in the full power of legs and arms to 

 aid my descent, and with some difficulty screwed my way down into the bed of 

 the rivulet, which I groped along for some distance, till the increasing declivity 

 and foaming of the water warned me of a precipitous plunge, and I defiled again 

 laterally to the face of the rock. Here I gave notice of my progress by a loud 

 hallo, and while I paused for a reply, looked about my lithological perch. All 

 was still gloomy and dubious beneath me, and I clung tightly within a hollow 

 cranny, lest the space beneath me should offer no resting place but the thin air to 

 interpose between myself and the horrid rocks hurled in many an avalanche to 

 the base of the precipice. Yet the charm of vegetable beauty was even there — j 

 Saxifraga stellaris studded the wet stones with its verdant stars and red capsules 

 on long stalks; the Alpine Rue (Thalictrum Alpinum) spread its delicate little 

 leaves upon the rock, Lycopodium selaginoides lifted up its agglomerated club-like 

 fructification, and the elegant Bartramia fontana dripping with moisture, claimed 

 attention to the microscopic elegance of the peristomes of its numerous fairy urns. 



But again in nearer tones sounded my guide's voice, directing my downward 

 progress by rock and gully, till, after many a slip, I found myself emerging from 

 the fog, and within view of Clyn Cams at the very base of the rocks, below a 

 roseate hue faintly tinging the east, and the awful brow of Carnedd David 

 solemnly rising in the twilight. We had still a long pull to Llyn Idwall, and as 

 we emerged to the lake side from among the enormous detached boulders below 

 the black rocks of Twll Ddu, or the Devil's Kitchen, and crossed the rushing 

 torrent, night had steeped in sable the solemn vista before us, and we could barely 

 trace the caitiff Heron flagging silently away high in air. 



I looked up the ravine, upon the enormous sable rocks split and shattered by 

 many a wintry tempest, down which the torrent muttered its malediction and 



