70 BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK. 



well-cooked one of yesterday, melted away in that 

 perfect ride. The road was lonely, more lonely 

 than a by-road in West Gahvay, and, as in Galway, 

 low hazels grew thickly behind the stone walls ; 

 the wide lowlands down on our left lay sweet and 

 placid, and silent except for the corncrake ; the 

 mountains ran like a blue wall along the west, 

 a wall hacked and gashed as if by a siege, but 

 still indomitable. Cader Idris blocked the end 

 of the valley, overlooking all things ; but of what 

 avail are names, to what purpose the narrow English 

 language? They will not give one breath of the 

 transcendent air, or the greenness of the leaves that 

 the goats were tearing from the hazel twigs, or 

 one moment out of the heavenly silence. 



Descending leisurely from the heights and their 

 crisp, ragged woods, we discovered a line of railway, 

 and farther on a desolate hillside village, called by 

 its inhabitants " Trowsefunneth." How they spell 

 it is a different affair ; probably they do not try. 

 We had tea there. The proprietor of the inn wished 

 us to have a leg of mutton — " quite tender, yess 



