CLEAR WATERS 



are used, and for the ' back-end,' besides the March 

 brown, effective here throughout the season, and a 

 claret and mallard, there is a wonderfully killing 

 local fly known as the C6ch-yn-las. Spinning is only 

 allowed in certain places, and rightly so. The out- 

 flowing river runs straight down a riotous course of 

 some three miles, from the high bottom dam, beneath 

 which, at the mountain foot, the company have built 

 a very pretty model village for its employes, to the 

 Wye. The road from Rhayader, which little town 

 sometimes gives its name to the lakes, and is, so to 

 speak, their metropolis, runs more or less up the valley 

 and then skirts the lakes up both forks to their head- 

 waters. A wild, rock-plated, mountain ridge, beauti- 

 fully dominating the Wye valley, drops sharply down 

 at its remoter side into the lakes along their whole 

 extent, and virtually cuts them off, save by mountain 

 foot trails, from the outer world. These semi-pre- 

 cipitous, western slopes, ablaze in its season with great 

 splashes of heather, nobly confront you as, with your 

 back to the illimitable wilderness, you fish the farther 

 shores of Caban, Pen-y-gareg, and Craig-Coch. A 

 single road of sorts, however, crosses the northern ex- 

 tremity of this mountain wall. This is the old and 

 now more than half-deserted highway to Aberyst- 

 with. A mere farmer's road, you may climb it for a 

 laborious three miles from Rhayader up a most lovely 

 glen with a small lake in the meadows below, and 

 riven by the white flash of a continuously leaping 

 torrent. At the summit you emerge on to a bleak, 

 moorland watershed, whence in due course the stony 

 track drops abruptly for a mile or so to the lonely 

 182 



