How can I hope to give an idea of the magnificent view which met our eyes as we stood there—a view of which, as far as I am aware, no description has ever yet been attempted?
To our right towered the Peaks of Dolgelly, with their saw-like outline cutting the blue sky with a faint grating sound, while the shreds of white cloud lay below in drifts. At our feet were the sun-lit waters of the lake, upon which danced a fleet of brown-sailed herring-boats; beyond was the plain of Capel Curig, and there, over on the left, sparkled the falls of Y-Dydd.
As I took all this in I felt a longing to say something worthy of the occasion. Being possessed of a considerable fund of carefully-dried and selected humour, I frequently amuse myself by a species of intellectual exercise, which consists in so framing a remark that a word or more therein may bear two entirely opposite constructions; and some of the quaint names of the vicinity seemed to me just then admirably adapted for this purpose.
I was about to gauge my dull-witted companion's capacity by some such test, when he forestalled me.
'You ought to live up here, Bunting,' said he; 'you were made for this identical old mountain.'
I was not displeased, for, Londoner as I am, I have the nerve and steadiness of a practised mountaineer.
'Perhaps I was,' I said good-humouredly; 'but how did you find it out?'
'I'll tell you,' he replied, with one of his odious grins. 'This is Cader Idris, ain't it? well, and you're a cad awry dressed, ain't you? Cader Idrissed, see?' (he was dastard enough to explain) 'That's how I get at it!'
He must have been laboriously leading up to that for the last ten minutes!
I solemnly declare that it was not the personal outrage that roused me; I simply felt that a paltry verbal quibble of that description, emitted amidst such scenery and at that altitude, required a protest in the name of indignant Nature, and I protested accordingly, although with an impetuosity which I afterwards regretted, and of which I cannot even now entirely approve.