The cathedral is extremely interesting and made doubly so by an intelligent verger whom we located with considerable difficulty. Pilgrims to St. David’s were apparently too infrequent to justify the good man’s remaining constantly on duty as in larger places, and a placard forbidding fees, may have dampened his zeal in looking for visitors. But we found him at last in his garden, and he did his part well; nothing curious or important in the history of the cathedral was forgotten by him. The leaning Norman pillars, the open roof of Irish oak, the gorgeous ceiling with its blood-red and gold decorations, and many relics discovered during the restoration, were pointed out and properly descanted upon. But one might write volumes of a shrine which kings once underwent many hardships to visit, among them Harold the Saxon and his conqueror, William of Normandy. Nothing but a visit can do it justice, and with the advent of the motor car, old St. David’s will again be the shrine of an increasing number of pilgrims, though their mission and personel be widely different from the wayfarers of early days.
ST. DAVID’S CATHEDRAL.
There is only one road out of the lonely little town besides that which brought us thither and we were soon upon the stony and uncomfortable highway to Cardigan. Here we found roadmaking in primitive stages; the broken stone had been loosely scattered along the way waiting for the heavy-wheeled carts of the farmers to serve the purpose of the steam roller. The country is pitifully barren and the little hovels—always gleaming with whitewash—were later called to mind by those in Ireland. There are no great parks with fine mansions to relieve the monotony of the scene. Only fugitive glimpses of the ocean from the upland road occasionally lend a touch of variety. At Fishguard, a mean little town with a future before it—for it is now the Welsh terminus of the Great Western Railway’s route to Ireland—we paused in the crowded market square and a courteous policeman approached us, divining that we needed directions.
“The road to Cardigan? Straight ahead down the hill.”
“It looks pretty steep,” we suggested.
“Yes, but nothing to the one you must go up out of the town. Just like the roofs of those houses there, and the road rough and crooked. Yes, this is all there is of Fishguard; pretty quiet place except on market days.”
We thanked the officer and cautiously descended the hill before us. We then climbed much the steepest and most dangerous hill we found in all the twelve thousand or more miles covered by our wanderings. To our dismay, a grocer’s cart across the narrow road compelled us to stop midway on the precipitous ascent, but the motor proved equal to the task and we soon looked back down the frightful declivity with a sigh of relief. We were told later of a traveling showman who had been over all the main roads of the Island with a traction engine and who declared this the worst hill he knew of.