OF AN INSECT HUNTER. 73 



falls, and was now glittering in the rays of an unclouded sun, 

 while gay little rainbov/s flickering and hovering over the 

 scene, gave it a still additional brilliancy. Below the falls 

 stood a blasted oak tree : the excessive whiteness of its weather- 

 beaten bark, and the exquisitely delicate green of ferns and 

 mosses which half covered it, were finely contrasted with the 

 sombre foliage of the oaks in the back-ground, unlighted by 

 the sun. Several large dragon-flies were sailing with untiring 

 wing over the falls, pursuing their insect prey. The graceful 

 Paphia occasionally floated across, and settled on the abundant 

 blossoms of a bramble that hung suspended from the summit 

 of a projecting rock beneath our feet. 



-Turning to the right, you look down the chasm in which 

 flow the waters of Rheidiol and Mynach, united only a few 

 hundred yards below your feet; and looking still further to 

 the right, you see the noble and snowy fall of Rheidiol leaping 

 from its own spacious forest-clad chasm. This fall is beauti- 

 fully broken, and its volume of water is much greater than that 

 of Mynach : it is heard also at a greater distance. After the 

 Rheidiol and Mynach have united, a mountain stream, whose 

 name the Insect-Hunter did not learn, came dancing into the 

 chasm with a broken fall of eiglity or ninety yards. 



Returning from this truly beautiful spot, you again reach 

 the road, and, continuing your onward course, suddenly find 

 yourself on the Devil's Bridge. This bridge spans the 

 chasm of the Mynach immediately before the series of falls 

 already described: the arch is twenty-eight feet, but the 

 chasm, six feet below, is spanned by a second arch of only 

 twenty feet : this second is a gem of a bridge ; below it the 

 chasm narrows a few feet, and then its walls go perpendi- 

 cularly down thirty-five or forty yards. The lower arch is 

 wholly invisible from the upper, being exactly under it. The falls 

 of Mynach are not seen from the bridge, the river making a 

 sudden turn, and being, moreover, completely hidden by the 

 trees ; neither is it possible from any one point of view to see 

 the falls and the bridges, although so frequently thus shown 

 in engravings. The height, from the bridge to the bottom of 

 the last fall, is stated to be one hundred and fifty yards, but I 

 think this is more than the reality ; I should estimate it to be 

 between one hundred and ten and one hundred and twenty yards. 

 The extreme singularity of the chasm or fissure through which 



NO. I. VOL. V. L 



