Turning inland again among the low oak-woods, the country was rich and flowery, and always silent, and we ourselves were hot and speechless under the hot, grey sky. A discovery that one of the girths was rubbing off the skin behind Tom’s foreleg occasioned a delay fraught with gloom, difficulty, and the tongues of buckles. Miss O’Flannigan mounted a rock, and fell to sketching the unsketchable—a habit with her in moments of inglorious crisis, her sole contribution to the difficulty being a stout square of chamois leather which she wore on her chest in memory of a departed cold. With this interesting relic I padded the girth, and we proceeded in despondency. It was one of the junctures when the Tommies, and riding-tours generally, became intolerable, and we were on the dangerous verge of admitting as much, when our attention became concentrated on six black objects advancing towards us in single file along the barren perspective of road. They were a walking party, evidently engaged in record-breaking, and as with purple, streaming faces they swung past us, we accepted the object-lesson, and thanked heaven for the Tommies.
Following on this was a mile of solitude and sinuous advance through craggy places; then, suddenly, the Pass of Aberglaslyn, and the tourist by companies—especially the clerical tourist. There were four long black coats, and as many soft black felt hats, on or about Aberglaslyn bridge, each with a remarkable proportion of female adherents, to whom, guide-book in hand, or with the unaided gush of inspiration, they defined the beauties of the Pass. We are naturally modest, but we cannot refrain from mentioning that from the moment we came in sight we usurped the position of the beauties of the Pass. The adherents of the clergy turned with ecstasy from the contemplation of nature to feast their eyes upon us, our sun-burned straw hats, our equally sun-burned noses, and our bulging wallets.
We are disposed to deal leniently with an unsuccessful rival, and inured though Aberglaslyn must now be to picturesque description, we will spare it further adjectives. There was a poor woman once in the county of Cork who was shown a dazzling array of wedding-presents. Speech first failed her, and then she said: “Mother of God! it’s like a circus.” Thus, and with such a humble reverence, do we say of Aberglaslyn Pass, that it is like a circus.
There is something at once gallant and touching about the way in which the English tourist places his hand in that of convention, and is led by her, uncomplaining, through very arid places. This elderly generalisation does not, by so much as a backward glance, include Aberglaslyn, with its cliffs and fir-trees, and mountain-sides flushed with blossoming heather; it is for the moment concentrated upon the grave of Gelert, its railings and
little stone pillars, erected possibly by the Town Commissioners to supply a want long felt by tourists of an object for a short walk. The selectors of the site have been carried away by a sense of fitness probably adhering since the days when they buried their pet rabbits in the back-garden, and, with guileless convention, they have erected the tomb of Gelert under a tree, a healthy one in the prime of life, standing discreetly and yet conveniently in a roadside field. The sentiment of the back-garden has been added at a touch by the railing, and the result suffices to the tourist. Forth to it, in duteous pilgrimage, go the brides and bridegrooms, seeking in the long vague forenoons of holiday for some occupation that shall savour of the compulsory, and at all events make them glad to get home again for luncheon. The mile of road between Gelert’s grave and his village was punctuated with the newly married; and, even at the risk of supporting another conventionality, it must be recorded that the distance that separated each bride from her groom was noticeable, and seemed to indicate a desire to economise conversation.
Do the brides and bridegrooms support the venerable fraud who sits outside the Goat Hotel in full Welsh costume, selling rag-doll replicas of herself? It would seem so, for she apparently prospers, and we cannot believe that the hotel-keepers, who form the balance of the population, can buy many rag dolls.
The sky had grown grey, the air chilly, the weather was turning nasty, the saddles had perceptibly turned and were extremely nasty. These things may perhaps extenuate our bad taste in finding Beddgelert a trifle disappointing. It seemed to lack a central point; even the guide-books have to admit that its lions are not on the spot, although it seductively adds that they are within an “easy walk.” Snowdon was also included among the objects of interest within an easy walk, but a brief colloquy with the manageress of the Prince Llewellyn Hotel stamped the statement as a vicious flight of fancy.
“It’s a good four miles,” said that intelligent woman, regarding us compassionately; “but there is ladies that think nothing of that.”