Seal Bark. 149 



They occur, moreover, only in this particular series of 

 the millstone-grit, other descriptions of grit in the neigh- 

 bourhoodthose not so amenable to the action of the 

 weather being entirely without. Very often, too, the 

 basins are in positions such as neither Druids or any one 

 else would ever select for ritual or ceremonials. The 

 number of basins is itself an argument against the 

 Druidical origin, since so many would never possibly be 

 required, to say nothing of the fairly determined fact 

 that the Druidical altar was usually a cromlech, formed 

 by placing a great slab of stone horizontally upon the 

 edges of two other slabs fixed in the ground vertically. 



But we are bound for Seal Bark. To get hither, the 

 road must be quitted near the "Moorcock," and a way 

 found through the firwood to the bottom of the valley, 

 then re-ascending by the borders of the stream. A 

 water so wild and beautiful it would be difficult to find 

 nearer than Scotland or Carnarvonshire. Sliding, gliding, 

 tumbling, in every conceivable mode, now it hurries along 

 a smooth and limpid current; now it plays with the 

 boulders, and changes to little cascades; now it fills 

 little bays and recesses with reposing foam as white as 

 snow, or that are alive with circular processions of 

 untiring bubbles that swim awhile delicately, round and 

 round, then, like the dancers in Sir Roger de Coverley, 

 when they bend beneath the arch of lifted arms, rejoin 

 their first partners and away down the middle, away and 

 away, as swift as thought. Great defiles open on the 

 right and left, Rimmon Clough and Birchen Clough, at 



