MEMORIES OF SNOWDON 



ABOVE the scant woods of Llanberis we toil a little 

 way in the blazing sun, and then look back on the 

 long lake with its hamlets on the near side. We turn 

 again and again at intervals to view the same scene 

 at increasing distances. The lake shrinks to the size 

 of a bean, which it resembles in shape, and every 

 house disappears. By that time we have another 

 lake or tarn to our front. It lies at the foot of a 

 precipice that seems to reach half-way up Snowdon, 

 and the lake is apparently not so big as a lady's 

 pocket-handkerchief. We wonder what size we should 

 appear to some one enjoying the stupendous solitude 

 of its eyried shore. 



After us puffs and strains the mountain train. It 

 overtakes us by about a yard in ten, when we are 

 going well. It comes up as we do, footstep by 

 footstep, planting the cogs of its driving-wheel each 

 into the proper slot of the iron path prepared for it. 

 There is not one of us who does not profess to 

 abominate the mountain railway, yet we have sent up 

 by it our sandwiches, our mackintoshes, and even a 

 jacket, so that we may travel as lightly as possible. 

 And as our legs lift foot by foot our flannel-clad 

 twentieth-century bodies, some one asks us to imagine 

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