20 BIRD HAUNTS AND NATURE MEMORIES 



tops lifted like smoke in the stiff sea-breeze. Across the 

 streak of twinkling water, looking cool under a hot sun, 

 lay the Welsh shore with its stern background of 

 mountains, the Snowdon range. Far away to the right, 

 beneath the peaks of Yr Eifl, was the precipitous face of 

 Careg-y-llam, haunt of the chough in those days, and 

 where the guillemots still line the ledges in thousands. 

 Towering above was the shaggy top of Cam Madryn, 

 beyond the Rivals, and to the north Carnedd-goch, scarred 

 by the Nantlle quarries; the snow-capped conical peak 

 of Snowdon itself and the sister height of Crib-y-dysgyll, 

 a great snow mound, were straight before us. The 

 Glydyrs and Carnedds were white alps, Y Foel Fras had 

 a wintry cap; we might have been gazing on Alps, 

 dazzlingly white in hot summer sunshine. 



The monks of Llanddwyn are forgotten; the children 

 of the pilots play above their nameless graves and hunt 

 for cowries on the shore where they once landed ; starlings 

 nest in the walls, feeding their noisy young in the Abbey 

 refectory. Drifting sand from the Irish Sea has buried 

 deep the village that was, and rabbits burrow and wheat- 

 ears nest where once the pilgrims trod. 



Two streams, the Braint and Cefni, rise in the inland 

 marshes, and enter the sea on either side of Newborough 

 Warren; the latter was once a trickle through a great 

 marsh, now it is a broad, embanked tidal stream, draining 

 the whole of the vast Malldraeth Marsh. Much of this 

 land is under cultivation, rich, fertile soil; but here and 

 there are unreclaimed reaches, wet tracts where reeds, 

 rushes, and horse-tails flourish, and where in places the 

 water-violet and mare's-tail abound. Old spoil-banks, 

 where pioneers dug but did not mine for coal, rise above 

 the level, and thick double hedges and deep dykes cross 

 the marsh to mark out the fields where the black Welsh 

 cattle wade in the lush, rich grass. A few pools or llyns 



