FIRST EMPTYING. 5 



angler's playground the river. Call the fisherman's sport 

 dull, stupid, slow, if you will, but at least admit that 

 no other sportsman ever sees nature or has time to see 

 her at home and at her best, pure and unsullied by any of 

 the blackening arts of man. There is a tendency, I know, 

 in this degenerate age to scoff at this and to look solely 

 on the practical side of angling, but that recreation will 

 always be the best which provides food for the mind and the 

 memory, as well as the necessary exercise for the body. 

 This is one of the chief reasons why so many old, and I will 

 add so many good, men have remained ardent anglers to the 

 last day that Time and his attendant Decay would permit 

 them, and then they have remembered it all. What is the 

 finest basket of trout, save in the surroundings in which they 

 were caught, to the grandeur of Llyn Ogwen and the pass of 

 Nant Ffrancon in the glory of this first day of June ? 



On the left of an extremely narrow gorge rises the spur 

 of Y Glydr Fawr, 3,275 feet high ; where we see it, it is a 

 sheer precipice for full 400 feet until it is broken by boulders 

 piled in wild heaps of confusion, as the result of the storms, 

 and frosts, and falls of countless ages. Immediately in front 

 and close to Y Garn, 3,107 feet high, less forbidding in its 

 purple aspect under the setting sun than its sterner neighbour, 

 but apparently blocking up the narrow pass by which the 

 only egress from the valley in front can be obtained, a narrow 

 road winding along a tiny level between the lake and 

 Y Glydr Fawr, and on the right the black waters of Ogwen 

 showing white manes here and there under pressure from 

 the strong breeze. There on the other side of the water, 

 500 yards away, rises Carnedd Dafydd, 3,430 feet high. I 

 do not know what Carnedd means, but Dafydd is a caution, 

 he is straight up and much straighter down. If you 

 succeeded in getting over him and by any chance dropped, 

 or walked, or tumbled, or threw yourself, or in any other 

 way got off him, you might rely on a sheer drop down a 



