ELAN LAKES— WILD SOUTH WALES 



inevitably with Radnor, so much are they interlocked, 

 ranks easily next.' 



' I thought Dev ' 



* Yes, of course you did, because its extremely 

 articulate and patriotic sons have been booming it 

 in admirable and picturesque prose and verse for fifty 

 years. And railroads, London journalists, and tourists 

 have responded to the boom. With a public that 

 for the most part knows nothing of its own country, 

 this has been easily developed into a sort of cult. It 

 is the only county of semi-mountain class outside the 

 Welsh marches, and south of Yorkshire or Derbyshire. 

 For Cornwall inside its seacoast need not be taken 

 count of in such company.' 



Devonshire as a whole is a beautiful and lovable 

 county, but considerable sHces of it, as we noticed in 

 a former chapter, are undeniably commonplace of 

 aspect, even to the verge of ugliness. Now Brecon- 

 shire cum Radnor does not, I really think, contain a 

 dull or a commonplace square mile. Its mountains 

 reach an altitude of nearly three thousand feet — the 

 height, that is, of Cader Idris and Helvellyn. They 

 are often, too, of shapely make, and sometimes of 

 rugged summit and precipitous face. In all the 

 streams of Devon the Dart, the queen of them, not 

 excepted, there is assuredly not a Wye, and I think 

 scarcely an Usk. And these two noble salmon 

 rivers between them wash the red sandstone banks 

 or Silurian crags of Brecon and Radnor for something 

 like eighty miles of their impetuous courses. In the 

 vales, too, He gracious park-lands and noble timber, 

 and ancient manor-houses and hoary churches, and 



175 



