20 LLANDDWYN 



least four miles, for which probably no respectable 

 cartographer could have been found to make room 

 between his coast lines. 



As I am loth to believe that we advanced by a 

 series of re-entering circles, I can only conclude that 

 those four visionary miles were in their character 

 intensive rather than extensive, the result of a recur- 

 ring belief that every sandhill was the last, disillusion- 

 ment as frequent imparting a sense of endlessness to 

 our progress ; and endlessness is modestly stated at 

 four miles. Be all that as it may, let ordnance 

 surveyors reconnoitre warrens on wild horses if they 

 will, but let them take no 'cycles. They excite the 

 imagination, impair the judgment, and confound 

 geography beyond rehabilitation. 



Yet in the end we had vengeance of that 

 vengeance. For, when we had scrambled up one 

 of those ever-recurring last ridges, unaware of 

 impending deliverance, a Ringed-plover piped out 

 from an enclosed patch of shingle below, and we knew 

 that the last of those last sandhills had been passed. 



A moment later we stood on the shore, with 

 Llanddwyn island, not visibly detached from the 

 mainland, clutching the waters like a rocky claw on 

 our extreme right, and the long, narrow spit of the 

 North Sands balancing it on our extreme left. 

 Between these stretched the curving sands of the 

 shore ; before the sands the sea, and beyond the 

 sea the piled-up mountains of Carnarvonshire 

 Snowdon and Mynydd Mawr, Garnedd Goch and 

 Mynydd Craig Goch, the mountains about Clynnog, 

 and Yr EifTs triple peak, last of this giant brood, 

 shadowing the south. 



