218 



THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



thankful to get ashore, where we enjoyed a capital dinner (at 9.30 p.m.), 

 provided for us at the " St. George's Hotel." Next morning the weather 

 looked so promising, the rain of the previous night having given place to bright 

 sunshine, that all of our party, with two exceptions, rejoined the " Hyaena/' 

 although we had most of us bidden our leader good-bye on the previous 

 night, the rolling propensities of our steamer having taken the science out of 

 most of us, and replaced it by a determination to return home by the first 

 train on the morrow. Those who did return to brave the great rollers which 

 we encountered outside the bay had reason to be thankful for having done 

 so, for having got under the lee of Anglesea by 11 o'clock, we were in fairly 

 calm water, where our dredging and trawling went on most successfully, being 

 carried round Puffin Island and on through the Menai Straits, steaming as 

 far as Port Dinorwic, when finding the tide did not favour our getting back 

 next morning (for we had intended staying at Carnarvon for the night), we 

 put about and returned to Beaumaris where we spent the evening, after tea, 

 in pleasantly strolling through Anglesea lanes. 



One of our party, Mr. Alfred O. Walker, of Chester, not wishing to return 

 with the expedition to Liverpool on the morrow, I suggested his joining me 

 in a day's excursion to Snowdon, to which he immediately consented. The 

 following morning (Whit Monday, May 25th), we left the "Hyaena" and 

 our friends at Beaumaris, and started by the early coach for Menai Bridge. 

 Early coach though it was we found the only accomodation to be on the roof, 

 where with our backs to the luggage we had a most uncomfortable seat but 

 a splendid view of the Straits as we drove along, arriving at Menai Bridge 

 just in time for a train which eventually landed us at Llanberis about eleven. 

 Arrived there we had to run the gauntlet of " guides," one of whom, aged 

 about seven years, gravely assured us that '* we wass sure to lost ourselves," 

 if we did not engage his services, for which he asked the modest sum of four 

 shillings. However we did not believe in being " guided " along a path as 

 as distinct as any causeway (and as rough as any pebbly beach), so deter- 

 mined to chance becoming the victims of another Snowdonian accident. 

 After what I had heard and read of the toilsome climbing necessary to reach 

 the summit even from Llanberis, which though the longest, is by far the 

 easiest of the various paths, I was thoroughly — I was about to say disgusted 

 —at the fact that I had had far harder climbing in the neighbourhood of 

 Llangollen, and at much lower elevation. Indeed by taking it easy — the true 

 secret of mountain climbing — I was never once out of breath in the whole of 

 the ascent, five and a half miles from Llanberis. When we reached an ele- 

 vation of 1800 to 2000 feet beetles became common ; and from this elevation 

 to the summit (3570 feet) they were abundant, even among the thick patches 



