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sedition for picking up sticks, and the other for lighting fires. Like 

 poor Clare, the Northamptonshire bard, I felt disposed to vent an 

 anathema upon enclosures, but it was useless; there the larches were 

 of twenty years growth or more, and beneath their canopy I must 

 proceed. Accordingly, on through the plantation we went, occasion- 

 ally passing a protruding mass of rock, and my guide led me to a 

 rough column of stones, erected, he said, in honour of Lord Rodney, 

 renowned in the naval annals of the last century, and which he 

 seemed to think was the ultima Thule of our journey. Nothing, 

 however, was further from my thoughts. In the first place, without 

 yielding in patriotism to any of my countrymen, nothing could I see 

 in the wretched mass of stones before me to call up a single associa- 

 tion ; it is, in fact, a chimney-like mass of rough slabs, put together 

 in the roughest manner possible, perhaps about forty feet high, with- 

 out the slightest inscription, and might as well be supposed to com- 

 memorate Caractacus as Rodney. It has, however, the solitary merit 

 of standing on the highest part of the hill , and may therefore have its 

 use as a rallying point amidst the maze of foliage now cloaking the 

 sides of the formerly exposed Craig. A magnificent view extends 

 from this point in clear w^eather, but unfortunately it was now hazy in 

 every direction, except towards the mighty mass of Cadir Idris, while 

 Snowdon himself, frowning and scarcely visible, was involved in a 

 huge tiara of clouds circling around his gloomy forehead. Dyer, the 

 author of the ' Fleece,' who seems to have scaled the mountain when 

 it was but a pasture for sheep, thus rapidly sketches the general view 

 without stopping to particularize : — 



" Huge Breaden's stony summit once I climb'cl 

 After a kidling : Damon, what a scene ! 

 What various views unnumbev'd spread beneath ! 

 Woods, towers, vales, caves, dells, cliffs, and torrent-floods ; 

 And here and there, between the spiry rocks, 

 The broad flat sea." 



All this, whatever poetry might imagine, an interminable haze pre- 

 vented me from now distinguishing. 



Perceiving few plants near the column, except Erodium cicutarium 

 and Sedum Forsterianura, the latter of which is abundant on the rocks 

 of the summit west and north, I prepared for a debouch into the thick 

 of the plantation, to the surprise of my guide, who rather wondered 

 at my retreat from the column. I now found the unpleasantness 

 occasioned by the planting of the hill, for the firs and larches have 



