192 
HOURS AMONG THE ROCKS AND CLOUDS. 
his level rays upon the foliage, but could not penetrate their interior. As a last 
resource, I drew a large clasp-knife from my pocket, and in the direction of the 
west cut down all before me, till I was tired of slaughter, but without apparently 
bettering my condition. I began to prepare for a night vigil in the wood, and— 
“ Under the greenwood tree 
Who loves to lie with me,” 
presented itself as a very apt quotation adapted to my present circumstances, 
only that unfortunately no one could respond to my call. At last, towering 
afar-off like a turreted cloud rising in the western horizon, a mighty Oak met my 
view, and my knife was again put in requisition to hack my way towards his 
dominance, meaning from his high head to take a keen survey of my forest 
position. He seemed surrounded with a triple guard—on one side the dwarf 
Blackthorns, with ten thousand multiplied spines, presented a barrier utterly 
impenetrable to my scanty means of offence, even had the day and not the night 
been before me—on another side Brambles ramified thicker than snow-flakes 
wound around each other, arching and inarching with curved spines, enough to 
terrify an Indian—here and there flanked by a dwarf spreading Hawthorn or 
Holly-bush,—while a crowd of tiralleurs in the shape of Thistles, rampant Net¬ 
tles, and Furze, swarmed in the advance. Bound this rampart I slowly wheeled, 
now and then attempting a charge upon the enemy, but to very little purpose, 
finding them too anxious to retain me among them ! While thus engaged in a 
recognizance, Fortune, ever faithful to the brave, led me stumbling against a 
mound which stopped my progress—and no poor captive flying from a dungeon 
ever felt more pleasure than I did, when, on scaling this mound, I perceived only 
a rude ditch between me' and a scattered vista of trees leading to the termination 
of the wood. 
But I began about Plinlimmon, its rocks, and its waters; I got among its 
clouds, and whither have they led me ? They have whirled me like the umbrella 
I have heard of, that left its master’s hand on the top of Cader Idris, and was 
found the next week on Plimlimmon, only that in this case I have been swept 
from the mountain. Well, I have only in this case to borrow another umbrella 
to get to it again, and I shall do so forthwith, for I have not done with the “ Bocks 
and the Clouds” yet.—-Plinlimmon has only been looked at, certainly not ascended: 
there I just catch his gloomy outline in the west as he slowly blankets himself 
up for the night. He is a good twelve miles off, for I am only now pausing at 
Llanidloes, below that bold Cat’s-back ridge that stmts up the Clydach glen 
whose wier increases its sullen thunder with the increasing gloom. Gloomy as 
the landscape now becomes, one flask of light, as if forgotten, settled on the 
heathy ridge now in glorious blossom, but has it in a purple glow of radiance, 
