188 
HOURS AMONG THE ROCKS AND CLOUDS. 
this, nay a midnight bivouac amidst the Heath and Parsley-fern, with exhausted 
supplies and a wet pillow to boot, may be enjoyed and laughed at with a com¬ 
panion to laugh with , to say nothing of its future importance as an adventure, 
with additio n and corrections at the social feast, or to be reserved up in an 
afternoon dose before a December fire! But alone upon the grey hills, when 
“ the spirit of the mountain shrieks,” and the red crescent of the young moon 
swims for a moment and is then drowned in the rushing deluge of on-sweeping 
clouds that at once obliterate rock, fell, and flood, is scarcely enviable. For if in 
stern reality night closes in, and from every gully in the mountain a succession 
of gusts howl as they burst maddening from their iron dungeons, and the water¬ 
spouts of heaven crashing upon the rocks, urge every torrent into winged 
messengers of desolation—the silent and despairing wanderer looks around for 
succour and assistance in vain, all glee is repressed, and even the hoarse “ dim 
saesnach ,”* would now be music to his ear. But he must move on in his dubious 
and difficult course, in Ossianic language “ slow as a gathered cloud when the 
winds drive it from behind.” 
Is this all fancy? Try it then, young enthusiasts of Nature, in an autumnal 
day in the wolds of Scotland, or on the mountains of Wales, but take no com¬ 
panion, not even a Dog; choose a misty day, when a the sun retires red and slow 
behind his cloud,” and think of him who perished on the Bed Tarn Crag in 
Cumberland, whose obsequies were sung by the Grey Plover flying, and whose 
memory has been embalmed by the muse of Scott— 
“ Dark green was that spot, midst the brown mountain heather, 
Where the pilgrim of Nature lay stretch’d in decay. 
Like the corpse of an outcast abandon’d to weather, 
Till the mountain winds wasted the tenantless clay.” 
Plinlimmon, too, has had its victims, and the spirit of a Catrin Gwyn ,” or White 
Kitty , is still talked of by the shepherds, as haunting a rocky glen by the Bygeilyn 
Pool, where an unfortunate woman, overtaken in a tempest at night, mistook her 
path, and was lost in a quagmire. 
This autumn I first awoke to the idea , and yet only to the idea , of the utter 
desolateness of heart and keen despair he must feel, who amidst the pitiless war 
of elemental strife, wakens to the fearful thought that he is in danger, and may 
probably perish. The courage of the battle-field is unavailing here, for the object 
is to retreat, danger on every side, but uncertainty and apprehension adding 
dismay and confusion. I was on the Glyder-Vawr, the steepest and most dan¬ 
gerous of the Snowdonian satellites, but I must needs cross its broken pillars to 
skirt Llyn Idwal in my way from Llanberris to Capel Curig. Snowden, gloomy 
* No English! the usual gruff reply of the peasantry in Wales, to a stranger’s inquiry. 
