LETTER XXVI.
Caernarvon, July 19th, 1828.
My Beloved Friend,
I am now returned, dog-tired, from ascending Snowdon, the highest mountain in England, Scotland, and Wales, which indeed is not saying much. Excuse me till morning, when I will give you a faithful relation of my ‘fata’. Meantime, good night.
July 20th.
As soon as I had committed the packet for you to Mr. S——, with the strongest injunctions to care, I left Bangor as quickly as four post-horses could convey me. On the way I visited some iron-foundries, which, however, I shall spare you, as I observed nothing new in them. I was rather unwell when I arrived at the inn at Caernarvon, where a most beautiful girl with long black hair, the daughter of the absent host, did the honours with great grace and sweetness. The following morning at nine o’clock I set out in tolerable weather on a ‘char-à-banc,’ drawn by two horses of the country. My driver was a little boy who did not understand a word of English. He drove like mad, ‘en train de chasse,’ over the narrow cross-roads of this rocky country. All my shouts and expostulations were vain, or seemed to be interpreted by him in the very contrary sense from what I intended; so that we went nine miles from the lake of Llanberis in less than half an hour, over stock and stone: I do not understand how the horses and carriages bore it. By the fishermen’s huts which lie scattered along the shore, I found a gentler mode of conveyance, a pretty little boat, in which I embarked with two robust mountaineers. Snowdon now lay before us, but unfortunately had, as the country-people say, put on his night-cap, while the lower mountains around shone in the brightest sunshine. It is not more than about four thousand feet high, but has a very imposing aspect, in consequence of its immediate rise from the shore of the lake, whereas most other mountains of the same class spring from a base of considerable elevation. From the point where we embarked, to the little inn at the foot of Snowdon, the lake is three miles over; and as the wind was very high, our voyage was rough and tedious. The water of the lake is black as ink; the mountains bare and strewed with rock, and only varied by occasional small green glens: here and there are a few stunted trees, but the general aspect is wild and desert. Not far from the small church of Llanberis is the so-called Holy Well, inhabited by a solitary trout of enormous size, who has for centuries been exhibited to strangers. Frequently, however, he will not be tempted from his hiding-place; and the country-people think it an unlucky omen if he appears immediately. As I am an enemy of all oracles, I did not visit it. My companions also told me a history of a wondrous amazon of gigantic strength, who long led a wild masculine sort of life here: and described to me certain enormous bees, which the Welsh admire and venerate so much that they think them natives of Paradise. Excellent salmon are caught here: the manner of catching them is strange; they are hunted by small dogs trained to the sport, who drag them out of the mud into which they occasionally creep.
As soon as I arrived at the inn I secured a ‘poney’ (a small mountain horse), and a guide, and hastened to set out, in hope that the threatening clouds would break about noon. Unfortunately, the very contrary happened; it grew darker and darker, and before I had climbed half an hour, followed by my guide leading the poney, one uniform mantle enshrouded hill and valley; and a heavy rain, against which my umbrella did not long protect me, beat upon us. We at length took refuge in the ruins of an old castle; and after I had laboriously climbed a decayed winding staircase I reached the remains of a balcony, where I found shelter under a dense mass of ivy. Everything around me wore an air of profound gloom; the crumbling walls, the wind which moaned plaintively through their fissures, the monotonous dropping of the rain, and the disagreeable termination of my hopes conspired to throw me into a melancholy frame of mind. I thought with a sigh, how nothing,—not even the smallest trifle,—falls out as I wish it;—how all that I undertake looks ill-timed and eccentric as soon as I undertake it; so that everywhere, as here, what others accomplish in light and sunshine, I must toil through in storm and rain. Impatiently I left the old walls, and once more climbed the mountain. The weather was, however, now so terrible, and the increasing storm so dangerous even, that we were once more compelled to seek shelter in a miserable ruinous hut. The inside was filled with smoke, in the midst of which sat an old woman spinning in silence, while some half-naked children lay on the ground, gnawing dry crusts of bread. The whole family seemed hardly conscious of my entrance; at least they made no pause or change in their occupations. For a moment the children stared stupidly and incuriously at me, and then fell again into the apathy of wretchedness. I seated myself on the round table, the only piece of furniture in the house, and once more gave audience to my thoughts, which were not the most exhilarating. Meanwhile, as the storm raged more furiously, my guide earnestly advised me to turn back. This would doubtless have been the most reasonable course, particularly as we had not yet ascended a third way up the mountain. But as I had long resolved to drink your health, dear Julia, on the summit of Snowdon, in champagne, and had brought a bottle with me from Caernarvon for that express purpose, it seemed to me of ill omen to give it up. With the cheerfulness which a firm determination and fixed purpose, whether in great things or small, never fails to impart, I said, laughing, to my guide, “If it were to rain stones instead of water, I would not turn back till I had been at the top of Snowdon.” I made the poor old woman a little present, which she received with apathy. The road was become extremely difficult; it lay over loose and smooth stones washed by the rain, or over very slippery turf. I admired how my active sturdy little beast, shod as he was with smooth English shoes, could step so securely forward on such a road.
Meanwhile it soon became so piercingly cold, that, drenched as I was by the rain, I could keep my seat no longer. I am so out of practice in climbing, that I was sometimes nearly overpowered by weariness; but as the Knight in the Romance of old Spiess was cheered by the sound of the bells of the twelve sleeping virgins, so I was continually exhorted to perseverance by the “ma—ma” of the mountain sheep, who were feeding in hundreds on the thin herbage around me. I thought of our pet lamb at home, and stepped vigorously onward, till at the end of an hour I had recovered from my fatigue, and felt fresher than at setting out. I was not compensated for my sufferings by the view, for, shrouded as I was in clouds, I could hardly see twenty paces before me. In this mysterious ‘clair obscur’ I reached the wished-for summit, the way to which lies over a narrow irregular wall of rocks. A pile of stones, in the centre of which is a wooden pillar, marks the highest point.
I thought I met my wraith, as a young man emerged from the mist who precisely resembled me, that is to say what I was when I wandered over the Swiss Alps sixteen years ago. He had, like myself, a light knapsack on his back, a sturdy staff in his hand, and a substantial dress, which may be called the classical costume of mountain travellers, contrasting as strongly with my London boots, stiff cravat, and tight frock-coat, as the youthful freshness of his face with the yellow, city hue of mine. He looked like the young son of Nature; I like the ‘ci-devant jeune homme.’ He had ascended the mountain from the other side, and, without stopping, asked me eagerly how far it was to the inn and what sort of road it was. As soon as I had given him the information he desired, he bounded away over the rocks, singing carelessly, and soon disappeared from my sight. I scratched my name near a thousand others on a block of stone, took out the drinking-horn which my host had lent me, and ordered the guide to draw the cork out of my bottle of Champagne. It must have contained an unusual portion of fixed air, for the cork flew higher than the top of the pillar by which we stood; and you may therefore, without imitating Münchausen, assert, that when I drank your health on the 17th of July, 1828, the cork of the Champagne bottle flew four thousand feet above the level of the sea. I filled the horn, to the foaming brim, and shouted with stentor voice into the dim obscure, ‘Long life to Julia!’ with nine times nine (in the English style). Three times I emptied the cup; and thirsty and exhausted as I was, never did I relish Champagne more. After my libation was completed, the prayers I sent up were not words, but profound emotions; the most fervent among which was the wish, that it might be Heaven’s will to grant happiness on earth to you, and then ‘if possible,’ to me;—and see, a pretty lamb sprang forth from the cloudy veil, and the mist opened and rolled away, and before us lay the earth suddenly gilded by a momentary gleam of sunshine. But in a minute the curtain fell again,—an emblem of my destiny: the beautiful and the desirable—the gilded earth—appear now and then like delusive meteors before me: as soon as I seek to grasp them, they vanish like dreams.
As there was no hope that the weather would become permanently clear in these elevated regions, we resolved to return. I found myself so strengthened that I not only felt no trace of weariness, but experienced a feeling unknown for years, in which walking and running, so far from being irksome, are in themselves a source of elastic enjoyment. I sprang, therefore, like my youthful double, so rapidly over the rocks and down the wet rushy slopes, that in a few minutes I accomplished a portion of the way which it had taken me an hour and a half to ascend. I emerged at length from the interminable cloud; and if the prospect were less magnificent than from the summit, it still afforded me great delight. It was still about seven hundred feet above the level of the sea, which lay in boundless extent before me. The Island of Anglesea reposed on its bosom; and in the mountain-gorges, which intersected each other in every direction, I counted above twenty small lakes; some dark, some so brightly illumined by the sun that the eye could scarcely bear to rest on their mirror-like surface. Meanwhile the guide had overtaken me; but as I could now perfectly distinguish the ‘terrain,’ the evening was beautiful, and I felt no fatigue, I let him and his clever little horse return home by the straight road, and determined to take my solitary way across the most striking points, ‘et bien m’en,’ for since I was in Switzerland I remember no more delicious walk.—I followed a defile along the wild pass of Llanberis, celebrated in the wars between the English and the Welsh, and where the latter, under their great prince Llewellyn, often contemplated the destruction of their foreign invaders, perhaps from the very spot where I then stood.