190 
HOURS AMONG THE ROCKS AND CLOUDS. 
effort on my own behalf, but, unpleasant as it was thus to linger, I felt that it 
was more dangerous to stir, where one incautious step might plunge me into 
endless night. I sat, therefore, surely in suspense of no enviable kind, till, after 
long lapse, a sound, hoarse as a huge branch sundered by the gale, came upon 
my ear as if toiling up the precipice.—It was repeated like a stone bounding again 
and again upon the hollow ground, but came up to me faint as a distant echo ! 
It was more like a summons to execution than a note of encouragement, but 
I shouted answer, and prepared to obey its summons. It was no easy task. 
Loaded with my cloak and folio of plants I approached the precipice. It was all 
slippery with moisture, and there was no certain footing upon the friable rock, 
while the depth of the gulph into which I was lowering myself it was impossible 
to fathom. A prill wept down the face of the dark cliff, and at some distance 
below had scooped itself a deep gullet down which the water, as it gathered and 
gained an impetus, foamed and gurgled, and fretted and bounded. Letting my 
folio speed its way as it best could, I called in the full power of legs and arms to 
aid my descent, and with some difficulty screwed my way down into the bed of 
the rivulet, which I groped along for some distance, till the increasing declivity 
and foaming of the water warned me of a precipitous plunge, and I defiled again 
laterally to the face of the rock. Here I gave notice of my progress by a loud 
hallo, and while I paused for a reply, looked about my lithological perch. All 
was still gloomy and dubious beneath me, and I clung tightly within a hollow 
cranny, lest the space beneath me should offer no resting place but the thin air to 
interpose between myself and the horrid rocks hurled in many an avalanche to 
the base of the precipice. Yet the charm of vegetable beauty was even there— 
Saxifraga stellaris studded the wet stones with its verdant stars and red capsules 
on long stalks; the Alpine Rue (Thalictrum Alpinum) spread its delicate little 
leaves upon the rock, Lycopodium selaginoides lifted up its agglomerated club-like 
fructification, and the elegant Bartramia fontana dripping with moisture, claimed 
attention to the microscopic elegance of the peristomes of its numerous fairy urns. 
But again in nearer tones sounded my guide’s voice, directing my downward 
progress by rock and gully, till, after many a slip, I found myself emerging from 
the fog, and within view of Clyn Cams at the very base of the rocks, below a 
roseate hue faintly tinging the east, and the awful brow of Carnedd David 
solemnly rising in the twilight. We had still a long pull to Llyn Id wall, and as 
we emerged to the lake side from among the enormous detached boulders below 
the black rocks of Twll Ddu, or the Devil’s Kitchen, and crossed the rushing 
torrent, night had steeped in sable the solemn vista before us, and we could barely 
trace the caitiff Heron flagging silently away high in air. 
I looked up the ravine, upon the enormous sable rocks split and shattered by 
many a wintry tempest, down which the torrent muttered its malediction and 
