ELAN LAKES WILD SOUTH WALES 



on somewhere else. Why not place the ' ancestral 

 home ' in Rutland for a change ? A note of originality- 

 would be struck in the very first chapter, and ought 

 to score. The jaded novel reader must be getting 

 rather tired of Devon and Cornwall. 



But beyond the more individual characteristics of 

 Brecon and Radnor, these counties share in their 

 border regions with Montgomery, Cardigan, and 

 Carmarthen the wildest and most untrodden moun- 

 tain wilderness that can be found south of the Scottish 

 Highlands. This exceptional seclusion is in part, no 

 doubt, due to the fact that the stock of grouse they 

 carry is so insignificant as to put these moors and 

 mountains outside the purview of the alien sportsman. 

 As you stand upon Plinlimmon, above the infant 

 springs of Wye and Severn, and look southward on 

 a clear day, you can see nothing as far as the eye can 

 reach but an interminable sea of mountain tops or 

 high, lonely moorland : in short, the most uncom- 

 promising solitude upon an extended scale known to 

 me anywhere within these islands. It is true that 

 in the Western Highlands you may look upon far 

 more expansive and more boldly uplifted wastes. 

 But then, written large all over them, their com- 

 mercial value seems to hit you in the eye. Here is 

 the Duke of Omnium's deer forest leased to a financier 

 of Semitic name and urban habit, or there again are 

 notice-boards erected by Mr. Van Schuyler of New 

 York, the tenant of a moor, notifying the traveller 

 through the wild that he must stick to the road. 

 Commercialism is thick in the atmosphere. You 

 know that every acre is listed on the books of sporting 

 M 177 



