364 HOURS AMONG ROCKS AND CLOUDS. 



spring, the majestic — the powerful — the expansive Severn, that reflects in its 

 stream the spires of Shrewsbury, Worcester, and Gloucester, and on whose 

 splendid estuary the fleets of India repose after their voyage to the isles of the 

 new world — the Severn ! on whose banks Hotspur and " Harry the king" at 

 Shrewsbury, Edward and Margaret at Tewkesbury, and Charles and Crom- 

 well at Worcester, have fought, and dyed the fields and the waters with gore — 

 the Severn ! on whose shore the roofs of Berkeley have rung with the shrieks of 

 an agonizing king — here has its origin. The Severn, renowned in legendary and 

 poetical lore, here has its outlet into the world. Sabrina, " virgin daughter of 

 Locrine," is here made goddess of the river, and 



" By the Rushy-fringed bank" 



here takes her stand with her rustic urn, amidst clouds, tempests, and continued 

 rain, winging the thought to Comus and his " monstrous rout," and Ludlow's 

 massy towers ; and preparing, as her subject tributaries defile from their Spongy 

 morasses, to pour with her increasing waters commerce, enterprise, the fruits of 

 industry and the stores of trade upon her tidal wave. 



Several other rivers issue from the deep recesses of Plinlimmon, of which the 

 Wye and the Rhydol are the most remarkable. The former weeps from a 

 desolate turbary among the southern ravines of the mountain, and, joined by a 

 hundred nameless prills, gallops madly into the vales of Radnor, spinning round 

 and round in long circuits with the most exuberant and playful wildness. 

 The Rhydol flows more soberly from a small lake in a punch-bowl hollow, sur- 

 rounded by black precipices on every side but the one that opens to admit the 

 vagrant stream, that soon enters upon a short but most romantic course into 

 the sea at Aberystwith, mingling in its way with the foaming waters of the 

 Monach in the profound abyss below the Devil's Bridge. The scenery about the 

 head of the Rhydol pool is the most striking in the Plinlimmon defiles, the 

 frowning rocks dripping with moisture, verdant with Mosses and Saxifrages, 

 rearing their craggy masses almost perpendicularly, and throwing the lake they 

 surround into the deepest and blackest shadow. 



In a hollow at the northern base of the mountain is a winding lake of dreary 

 and desolate aspect, called the Begalyn Pool. It receives a number of plashy 

 rills into its embrace from the redundancy of the weeping Mosses above it, and in 

 its turn pours forth a stream that becomes a tributary to the Severn below Llanid- 

 loes. A mass of black rocks hem it in on one side, with a rocky inlet a short 

 distance in advance of them, torn doubtless from their embrace by some elemental 

 crash. Trailing along the margin of the shallow waters of the Llyn near its head 

 I noticed an abundant growth of the curious little Ranunculus reptans. There 

 is an anecdote respecting this Begalyn Pool, which, as it bears upon the changes 



