91 



Lea\'ing the geologists at the search for fossils, a strong detachment, under 

 the guidance of John Lloyd, E«!q., setoff to visit the Craeg-y-gaercyd Encamp- 

 ment and the Trostre "Weir. Proceeding up the river to the high beetling rock, 

 which forms the natural defence of the encampment on this side, they took a 

 short steep pathway through the wood to the citadel above. Here, amidst a 

 tangled mass of coppice wood, brambles, broom, and heath, the outlines of the 

 camp could still be seen. Mr. Lloyd with the aid of a sketch pointed out the 

 line of the entrenchments. In many places they are 30 feet deep, and near the 

 north-west comer are several tumuli, some of which are from 15 to 20 feet in 

 height. The whole camp forms an irregular triangle, of which the river is the 

 base. This shape does not in the least indicate a Roman character, and some 

 think that it may have been an entrenchment thrown up during some of the 

 repeated attacks on the castle of LTak in Owen Glendower's time. Probably, 

 however, it was a British fortress made long anteiior to those times. There are 

 apparently three entrances to the camp, one on the south-east in the direction of 

 the town of Usk, another smaller one leading to the river, and a third on the 

 western side. 



The height of the lower part of the camp is 70 feet above the river, 

 of which full 50 feet is a rocky precipice. Its Welsh name, " Craeg-y-gaercyd," 

 the rocky height of the wooded camp, aptly describes its situation and present 

 condition. From its strong defences, natural and artificial, and as a post of 

 observation on the opposite camp of Camp-wood, and possibly on the castle of 

 Usk, this fortress would often find tenants in the olden time. Monks, we 

 know, always built their abbeys near famous salmon rivers, and with th« Usk 

 close at hand supplying 



" SammoDs all the yeere 

 " So fresh, so sweete, so red, so crimp witbal, 

 " That man might say. Ice ! sammons here at call," 



possibly some British prince might have made this camp his fishing box ! 



We must say little, however, about fishing until we get to Trostre Weir, 

 and it is somewhat doubtful if we ever get there. The tangled brake on the 

 camp, thanks to a friendly path, was passable, but here we are in an apparently 

 interminable withy bed, and occasional glimpses of each other are only caught at 

 intervals, when the waving plumes of the Uthe osiers nod to the summer's breeze. 



Having fought their way through, a short walk brings the party to the 

 Weir, and of this it may be said that it was once a most formidable barrier on 

 the river. Those who live on the banks of the Wye, a river now unimpeded in all 

 its lower course by a single weir, have forgotten all their ancestors did to free it 

 from these obstructions. About the year 1700 the great sweep was made, 

 when the County of Hereford gave £30,000 for the purpose, and in 1814 the 

 Duke of Kent's Weir at New Weir, the last remaining on the Wye, was taktn 

 down. On the Usk, however, no friendly Navigation Acts existed to effect 

 such good deeds, and up to the year 1846 this Weir at Trostre, with its fishing 

 boxes, monopolised the salmon produce of the river. Previously to that year 

 the capture of a clean salmon in the upper waters of the Usk during the fishing 



