226 Wild Life in Wales 



" There'll be good trouts there to-morrow, 



Spite of all we kill to-day 

 Will you catch them ? Well, begorra, 

 I can only hope you may ! " 



The old bridge is said to be the only one of its kind, in 

 the Dee water-shed, that was not carried away by Y lie mawr, 

 or "the great flood," of 2oth June 1781. It is shown in 

 one of the illustrations, and rejoices in the name of Pont 

 Gweirglawddgilfach. In the distance rise the crests of 

 Aran, but to the rugged grandeur of the scene no photo- 

 graph can do justice. The long high ridge, which rises so 

 abruptly on the southern shore of the stream, and whose 

 side is so picturesquely lined with walls of white quartz, 

 bears the suggestive name of the Cwic Craes. 1 Its flat top 

 is covered with peat many feet in thickness, which furnishes 

 half the inhabitants of the valley with their fuel, the re- 

 mainder of the farms having digging rights on the Aran 

 side. The accumulation of peat on these elevated table- 

 lands, with their precipitous terminations, and bare, worn 

 sides, still remains a prolific subject for speculation as to the 

 physical conditions that promoted its growth, and the 

 changes that have taken place since. The termination of 

 the peat is, in places, almost coincident with the abrupt 

 falling away of the hill ; and so far from now increasing in 

 thickness, it is, and has been for ages, slowly but surely 

 wasting away, and its component particles are washed by 

 every flood to lower elevations. For how long the process 

 has been going on, we can only guess ; but the channels 

 which storms have cut through the peat here and there 

 show it to be still several feet in thickness, resting upon a 

 gravel of the decayed rock beneath. That "gravel," for 

 the most part, has no doubt been fashioned, in situ, from 

 the slow weathering of the lava rock ; but it is instructive 

 to notice that, amongst it, an occasional rounded and worn 

 stone may be found, whose smooth surface seems clearly to 

 point to the polishing action of glacial periods. Some of 



1 Live Braes (Anglo-Saxon Cwic, living), doubtless in reference to some 

 ancient battle. The correct meaning of the word is preserved in the frequent 

 Biblical expression, " the quick and the dead." 



