CLEAR WATERS 



the hills. For resident humanity, sparse enough up 

 here even in former days, is now of course scarcer 

 still. It is not wanted, for obvious reasons ; nor is 

 boat or craft of any kind allowed upon these waters, 

 whose extent is such that they could hardly be circum- 

 vented by a walk of much less than twenty miles. 

 What makes so conspicuously for their charm, too, is 

 the boldness of much of the scenery amid which they 

 have been stored, and the wildness of it all. The 

 mouth of the valley opens out through the mountains 

 that enclose the most beautiful portions of the upper 

 Wye. The lakes run back within the fringe of that 

 mountain wilderness which spreads through the heart 

 of South and Central Wales, and that practically no 

 man outside it knows, and wherein but very few indeed 

 abide. 



1 South Wales ? Dear me,' says one's table neigh- 

 bour, * is it pretty ? Of course, I know North Wales, 

 but I thought South Wales was all coal mines.' Is it 

 pretty and coal mines ! Great heavens ! What have 

 the lands of Dyfed, of Ceredigion, of Brecheiniog done 

 that they should suffer such a blighted reputation, 

 for the opulent province of Morganwg whose smoking 

 mountains, once as fair as any, frown across the 

 Severn sea at Exmoor ? What, too, about Radnor and 

 Carmarthen, Pembroke and Cardigan ? 



' Sir or madam,' I always reply, and I fear some- 

 times with a little heat, ' the bulk of North Wales, 

 together with the English Lake Country, are of course 

 incomparable in this island south of the Scottish 

 Highlands. They stand alone. But next to these 

 I would have you know that Breconshire, coupled 



