CHAPTER XVI 



Lake Vyrnwy continued Cattle Rhiw Argor Giant's stairway Mountain 

 berries Hag of the midnight mist Bogs Polecats Highland and 

 Welsh keepers Poultry thieves Taffy was a Welshman Cock-crowing 

 Dew Glow-worms Nightjar's song. 



THE water intended for Liverpool leaves Lake Vyrnwy 

 through the stately tower, which rises high above its surface, 

 and stands in deep water off its northern shore. The water 

 is filtered in the tower by an elaborate system of screens, 

 before it is allowed to reach the pipes, through which it 

 flows, by gravitation, to the town on the Mersey, and thus 

 diverts from the Severn water-shed a stream of no incon- 

 siderable dimensions. To compensate the riparian owners 

 on the river Vyrnwy, for this extraction, the authorities are 

 bound, under their Act of Parliament, to send down that 

 stream, when and as required, twelve hundred million 

 gallons of water annually, in the form of freshets, each 

 freshet to consist of not less than forty million gallons. 

 This, of course, is in addition to the ordinary daily outflow 

 from the lake, which is constantly running to the river 

 through a pipe of eighteen inches in diameter ; and in 

 addition, also, to that which is sent down every month 

 through a thirty-inch pipe. 



As though to remind us that the water-shed has been 

 crossed, and that we are now looking down towards the 

 English border, the majority of the cows, and cattle, here- 

 abouts, carry the white faces that are so characteristic of 

 Hereford and the Western counties of England. In the 

 vales of Merionethshire, the native black cattle hold almost 

 undisputed sway, and for adaptability to a semi-mountain 

 life they would be hard indeed to beat by any other breed. 



The upper end of Lake Vyrnwy is dominated by a series 



of bold and most picturesque bluffs, which at a short 



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