560 
Agriculture of North Wales. 
mountain torrents, the great mass of which is covered by a stratum 
of peat, from a few inches to several feet in depth. In some 
places, as between Snowdon and Festiniog, there are several hills 
of not quite so alpine a character, the principal summits being 
round-backed hills, covered with the ordinary heath-plants and 
grasses, generally growing on a thin peaty soil, with a subsoil 
either of the dirty-yellow colour, noticed in the Hiraethog range, 
or blue clay ; sometimes the subsoil is an intermixture of both. 
A description of the appearance presented by the country along 
the Holyhead coach-road, after leaving the Pennant slate-quarries 
and proceeding to Capel Curig, will give a general idea of the 
soils existing in this alpine district, which may be said to extend 
from Penman Maur, in the north, to the range of hills in which 
are the Festiniog slate-quarries, in the south. On leaving the 
Pennant quarries the country, which had previously been of a 
mixed nature, viz., mountainous, with intervening vales of moderate 
extent, consisting of the best description of stiff loams, begins now 
to assume a decided alpine character. On the right for some 
miles the slate mountains start up at a very high angle, in some 
places almost perpendicular, with scarcely a vestige of vegetation ; 
on the left an immense slate, intermixed with grauwacke rocks, 
tremendous loose blocks of which latter are plentifully distributed 
along the sides, from the base to the summits, threatening the 
traveller with destruction at every step, — the vale now gradually 
narrows to a width in no place exceeding three hundred yards ; 
the soil consisting of peat about a foot in depth, much mixed with 
the earthy matters carried down by floods from the surrounding 
mountains. The fields are intersected at long intervals with 
drains, which in some places are contrived to assist in catchwork 
irrigation, the latter executed in a most clumsy manner. As the 
traveller proceeds the valley appears closed up, a high slate 
mountain directly facing him. At a somewhat sudden turn of the 
road the outlet makes its appearance, being a narrow rocky path 
formed with great labour, and a rude bridge, over which the 
traveller crosses from the right bank to the left of the small river 
which issues from lake Ogwen ; the road still for some distance 
on each side presenting nothing but rocks, until he arrives at Lake 
Ogwen, on each shore of which the desolate appearance already 
described continues, till the approach to the head of the lake, 
where the surface assumes the appearance of low round-backed 
hills, containing considerable projecting rocks and boulder stones, 
a deej) peat-moss in each hollow, gradually lessening in depth 
until it assumes the ordinary peaty moory soil, more than once 
alluded to previously, and to which I shall have other occasions to 
recur. The scene, as now described, continues to Capel Curig, 
where the hills again assume an alpine character (a great part of 
