CLEAR WATERS 



The old lady had a thousand sheep on the hills, which 

 were looked after by a son and a hired man. She 

 and her neat, nice-looking daughter worked with 

 apparently ceaseless and cheerful energy, and when 

 her labours were done she sat in the ingle-nook and 

 smoked the pipe of peace. Her husband had been a 

 man of character, and renowned for his almost trucu- 

 lent integrity. I have heard in Rhayader that when 

 slightly market-peart he used to ride down the street 

 with a halfpenny attached to the point of a stick, 

 daring any to say he owed them even so much. The 

 next neighbour to the westward was nine miles away 

 across the sheep ranges ! 



As the next day was clear, but the waters still thick, 

 I thought I would ascend Drygarn. Now Drygarn is 

 the monarch of all this waste south of Plinlimmon, and 

 is some twenty-two hundred feet high, with a large 

 cairn on the top. I found my way there in a couple 

 of hours, and as we breakfasted betimes on the farm 

 I was on the mountain top by nine o'clock. But the 

 walking on these south Welsh moors is unique in 

 Britain, unless you know the shepherds' paths, which 

 are not always traceable, so hopelessly intermingled 

 is the soft going with the hard. Half these mountains 

 are boggy enough to let in a horse, though they will 

 carry a man, but the tussocky moor grass is always 

 knee-high, and occasionally waist-high. The view 

 from Drygarn, which throws up a hard, rocky crown, 

 was glorious on that ghttering summer morning. 

 I could see the whole heaped-up, tawny wilderness 

 from PUnHmmon to the Epynt, and beyond the 

 Epynt and the hidden vale of Usk the sharp outhnes 

 i88 



