WILD WALES 281 



and even on the farms. The buzzard and the raven are 

 common bkds. You hear the hawks mew overhead, 

 and the crows bark as freely as in the earliest days. So a 

 motorist through the Elan Valley one day found himself 

 faced by a buzzard perched on the hedge at a few yards 

 distance and refusing to move for the interloper ; and 

 ravens were in number. 



When moving up the valley you pass the last of the 

 immense dams that hold up the stream. The lake is set 

 in a wilder scene than many of the great Canadian lakes ; 

 and appears to be as spacious. Fold upon fold of the 

 hills unmasked by dwellings though many are buried 

 under the lake enclose the scene, and you may walk 

 and walk and easily lose your way before reaching any 

 final summit. The storehouse of Manchester s water on 

 the Lakes a wonderful enough scene is thickly affor 

 ested with trim pines and other conifers. Here such 

 clothing has been quite omitted, and the landscape re 

 mains as it always was, except that the little rivers have 

 risen against the immense masses of masonry -till they 

 have levelled thek own valleys, buried village and home 

 stead and created a lake that finally destroys whatever 

 was domestic in the scene. The flood of Deucalion and 

 Pyrrha, at least as imagined by Horace, was less complete : 



Piscium genus summo adhaesit ulmo ; 



if there were no such trees in the valley, but the pike and 

 other coarse fish swim not only where once the polecat 

 ran, but where the Kite flew. 



You will not find in the Elan Valley any such primal 

 wildness as invests, for example, the Bird Rock, where 

 in splendid isolation, but for no other reason than the 

 force of a primeval habit, the cormorants gather to roost. 

 Perhaps the seaside is wilder on such a space of marsh 



