248 MY LIFE 



swelling soon passed off, and left no bad effects. Another 

 day, towards the autumn, we found the rather uncommon 

 black viper in a wood a few miles from Neath. This he 

 caught with a forked stick, to which he then tied it firmly by 

 the neck, and put it in his coat pocket. Meeting a labourer 

 on the way, he pulled it out of his pocket, wriggling and 

 twisting around the stick and his hand, and asked the man if 

 he knew what it was, holding it towards him. The man's 

 alarm was ludicrous. Of course, he declared it to be deadly, 

 and for once was right, and he added that he would not carry 

 such a thing in his pocket for anything we could give him. 



Though I have by no means a very wide acquaintance with 

 the mountain districts of Britain, yet I know Wales pretty 

 well; have visited the best parts of the lake district; in Scot- 

 land have been to Loch Lomond, Loch Katrine, and Loch 

 Tay; have climbed Ben Lawers, and roamed through Glen 

 Clova in search of rare plants ; but I cannot call to mind 

 a single valley that in the same extent of country comprises 

 so much beautiful and picturesque scenery, and so many 

 interesting special features, as the Vale of Neath. The town 

 itself is beautifully situated, with the fine wooded and rock- 

 girt Drumau Mountain to the west, while immediately to the 

 east are well-wooded heights crowned by Gnoll House, and 

 to the south-east, three miles away, a high rounded hill, up 

 which a chimney has been carried from the Cwm Avon copper- 

 works in the valley beyond, the smoke from which gives the 

 hill much the appearance of an active volcano. To the south- 

 west the view extends down the valley to Swansea Bay, while 

 to the north-east stretches the Vale of Neath itself, nearly 

 straight for twelve miles, the river winding in a level fertile 

 valley about a quarter to half a mile wide, bounded on each 

 side by abrupt hills, whose lower slopes are finely wooded, 

 and backed by mountains from fifteen hundred to eighteen 

 hundred feet high. The view up this valley is delightful, its 

 sides being varied with a few houses peeping out from the 

 woods, abundance of lateral valleys and ravines, with here 

 and there the glint of falling water, while its generally straight 

 direction affords fine perspective effects, sometimes fading in 



