Take your fishing rod with you, take your sketch book; explore the whole country; bring it away with you both in mind and on paper: leave care and trouble behind you; banish all reminiscences of town; go and be a dweller with the birds and the dumb animals, with the leaves and the stones, with the oak in the forest and the carn on the mountain, and gain thereby a fund of health and satisfaction, that shall endure for many a long day and year, nor be exhausted even then.
You are too old a traveller, we will suppose, to need many instructions as to the general apparatus required; only mind and err rather on the side of scantiness than otherwise; you can get all you really want at the first town you come to. Who is the rash man that would risk a good hat or a good coat on a Welsh mountain? Alas! he shall soon know the end of his gear, and lament over the loss of his pence. The very idea of going into cloud-land with anything on that you care about spoiling, or rather that can by any possibility be spoiled! Is it not your privilege, your aim, your pride, when you get among the mountains, to be able to go right on end, through stream and bog, over rock and swamp, without stopping to think of habilimentary consequences? You may tell an old traveller by the “cut of his jib;” it is only your thorough cockney that comes down in his new green shooting coat, and his bright shepherd’s plaid trowsers, just out of the tailor’s hands, and a hat with the shine not yet taken out of it. Look at that tall, thin, bony, sinewy man, going along the road there with an easy gait, neither stiff nor lax, neither quick nor slow, but always uniform, whether up hill or down hill, or on level ground, always at the same pace; his knees never tightened, his instep never approaching to a hop; but in all weathers and in all seasons, over rough or smooth, never falling under three nor quite coming up to four miles an hour. And look at his low-crowned felt hat,—he wears a Jim-Crow one, by the way, in very hot weather,—why, you would not give it to a pig-driver, so brown and battered it seems: and look at his funny little coat; neither a coat nor a jacket,—neither black, nor brown, nor blue, but a mixture of all colours, just as the rain may have been pleased to leave portions of its dye remaining. And his trowsers, shrunk to mid-leg proportions, are just covering the tops of his gaiters, yet allowing a bit of his gray worsted socks to appear. A stout stick which he twirls merrily in his hand, and a light leathern wallet, not bigger than your letter-bag, thrown over one shoulder,—or else his fishing-basket coming snugly under his elbow. He is the true pedestrian,—he is the ancient traveller,—he is the lover of the Cymro and the Cymraeg,—he is the man that enjoys himself thoroughly in Wales.
Once upon a time, dear friend, we found ourselves coming over Moel Siabod, that wild and beautiful hill rising over the eastern side of Capel Curig; swinging away in our simplicity of heart, and purposing to reach the lonely fastness of Dolwyddelan by noon, on a piping hot July day. We had crowned the mountain ridge, and had come half-way down the eastern slope, when we found ourselves at the edge of a great peat bog, with never a path, nor a stone, nor any thing to guide us through it. Beyond and below it lay the valley for which we were making, green, smiling, and beautiful, as Welsh valleys generally are. Above and behind us rose the bare crags of the mountain, darkening into a purple crest as their summits reached the fleecy clouds. We had nothing to do but to adopt the glorious old rule of following our nose; and so, without further ado, we tried to pick our way across the bog. We have a reminiscence of sundry skippings from tuft to tuft of heather, and of wonderful displays of agility; and at last we began to congratulate ourselves on the immense display of juvenile vigour which we were making. One more leap on to a fine bright piece of green grassy sward, and we were safe. Beyond it lay a ridge of rock and terra firma to carry us onward. One more spring and we should have crossed the bog. So now here goes for it; three paces backwards, a good swing with the arms,—one, two, three, and away!—plump into the very middle of the green sward,—and through it, down, down, down, until our hat and stick alone remained aloft! Why, ’twas the most treacherous place of the whole; a kind of syren’s isle that tempted men to destruction by the beauty of outward form,—though beauty of sound, indeed, there was none. How we got out has always remained a mystery; but we floundered and tumbled about, and cut more extraordinary figures with our arms than we had done at any time the last ten days with our legs, until at length we seemed to crawl out like a fly out of a treacle pot, and to attain some drier ground. Our black velvet shooting coat, and our nice white ducks had never made such an approximation of colour before: we had put on the sad and sober russet brown in which dame nature so much delights, and we came forth from our grassy bed a good specimen of the tints of the mountain dye-house. It was enough; our resolution was taken:—half an hour’s sharp walking down the descent brought us to the banks of the Lledr; we were not five minutes in selecting a proper spot; and there we immediately converted ourselves into our own washerwoman, after the most primitive fashion that any antenoachite ever adopted. In another half hour we were beginning to look whitish again; and by the end of the sixty minutes we were clad in garments on the most approved hydropathic principles; wet bandages we had plenty of,—for if any one had offered us the wealth of India, we could not at that moment have produced a single dry thread on our body. But here our pedestrian resources again came to our aid; the sun shone more bright than ever; we were in the bottom of the valley: the heat was intense. The village was still four miles off, and by the time we arrived abreast of the welcome notification of “Cwrw dda,” we were dried, ironed, mangled, folded, and plaited, more commodiously, (though less uniformly,) than ever our buxom little laundress could have done for us.
Once and again we got into a brown predicament in Wales, not so easily got rid of, nor leaving so few disagreeable reminiscences. You will excuse us for mentioning it, if you please; but our tableau de mœurs would not be complete without it. And here we beg leave to give notice that fastidious readers may at once close their eyes and read no more, or else skip over this page and try another. If they become offended, ‘twill be their own fault; what business have they to be prying into our secrets?
Once upon a time we did a rash thing: we made up our mind—and also our knapsack—to go to Bardsey Island. Now, ’tis a hundred to one that you never heard of Bardsey Island; and that, though your careful parents may have paid many a guinea per quarter for you, while at school, to learn Geography and the use of the Globes, you never yet were questioned by your usher as to where Bardsey Island was, nor what sort of a place it might be. Know, then, that it lies, a solitary green isle, some three miles or so from the extreme south-western point of Caernarvonshire,—a sort of avant-poste to Wales, like the Scilly Isles to Cornwall. On it live some five-score of inhabitants, real natives, supporting themselves on oysters and lobsters, and other marine monsters. An occasional dog-fish is there reckoned a luxury. ’Tis a vastly curious place,—the oddest kinds of sea-birds to be found there of any spot under the sun,—at least in these latitudes; the rarest shells; the most unique sea-weeds; the greatest pets of periwinkles; and such loves of limpets! We were off, then, for Bardsey:—do not go there, dear reader—take our warning by the way, and remain rather at home. We got to a place with a most out-of-the-way name—Pwllheli; a sort of ne plus ultra of stupidity and dulness; and from thence we made our way in a car to one of more euphonious denomination, Aberdaron. This was really a lovely spot, embosomed in a deep valley, at the corner of a romantic bay, with an expanse of snow-white sand, sufficient to accommodate all the bathers in England,—the sea of as deep a blue as at Madeira, and rocks like those of Land’s End, with the eternal spray of the ocean playing over them. A picturesque old church, partly converted into a school, partly into a pigeon-house—and the main entry to which was by one of the windows, stands at one end of the village with a miserable pot-house at the other. There is a stream and a bridge for loungers to lean and spit over; but other amusement in the place is none. As for public accommodation, it has not yet been thought of; strangers do not come there. None but the adjoining boors come thither to sot and gossip;—and as for our dear mellifluous Anglo-Saxon tongue, ’tis a thing never heard of. On arriving there and exploring the localities, and arranging for a boat to Bardsey next morning, we began to think about a bed, and soon perceived, on reflection, the total absence of any suitable accommodation within the limits of the village. But mark you the excellence of Welsh hospitality. The grocer of the place, the man of “the shop” par excellence, hearing of, or rather seeing us in a quandary, sent us his compliments, with a polite request that we would take up our quarters under his roof for the night. This was genuine hospitality; we hesitated not; and a better turn out in the way of feeding we have not often met with. Broiled steaks of salmon, fresh caught in the adjoining stream, fowls, and a good slice of Cheshire cheese, soon set our gastronomic capabilities at ease. Porter—some of Guinness’s best—and a glorious jorum of whisky and water, moistened our clay, and comforted our inward man. None of your wishy-washy whisky, or poor pale limpid compound, such as you buy in London; but some of the real potheen, just arrived from Wicklow—thick, yellow, oily, and slow to come out of its narrow-necked bottle. And then such a bouquet!—none but a genuine smuggler ever tasted the like. ’Twas a thing to be tasted, not described,—the real nectar of the Druids—if not of the Gods. Being somewhat fortified by these stout appliances, and having discussed half-a-dozen of Pontet’s best Havannahs, we mounted the rickety stairs that led through the lofts of our host’s dwelling to a goodly dormitory at the further end. And here the worthy man had really set out for us his best bed: all the little china and plaster images were ranged in prime order on the mantel-piece; and pictures of the Queen of Sheba and the Prodigal Son adorned the walls with unfading brilliancy. The bed looked as clean as ever we saw a bed in our lives; there was an odour of lavender about the room, and we were soon between the sheets, lost in dreamy oblivion.
We awoke: ’twas a lovely morning, with the earliest sun shining brightly in through the lattice; and we thought in our emotion to spring out of bed. Off went the bed-clothes at a bound, and we sat erect!—but how shall we describe our horror? We had gone to bed more or less white—more or less European in the tinge of our skin: we awoke of a glaring red, or, where the crimson dye was less vivid, we bore a mottled appearance, like a speckled toad. And, as Gulliver once lay among the Lilliputians, who ran from him, on his stirring, in frightened thousands, so there were now our accursed night visitants scampering away from us in every direction, possible and impossible, by thousands—nay, by myriads. The bed was literally brown with them; and ever, as we moved a limb, fresh gangs of latent devourers fled from beneath, and scoured across the sheets. They had lost the supernatural form our dreams had given them, and assumed the more homely one of ordinary fleas—of fleas of all sizes from a pea to a pin’s head! Old Nereus gave us some relief, for we rushed into his arms as soon as doors could be opened, and bolts forced out of their sockets; but, for many a long day after, we bore about us a vivid impression of our visitants at Aberdaron.
Do not, therefore, venture to sleep in a Welsh cottage; nor scarcely in a farm-house: trust yourself only to an inn,—your chances of sound rest and an untenanted bed are at least more favourable there;—but if ever you are benighted and forced to remain away from headquarters, make up your mind fairly to bivouac it amid the fern and the heather, or else sit up at your vigils by your host’s fire-side. The chirping cricket and the purring cat shall then be your sole companions.
We might detain you till doomsday with these “incidents of travel;” but we shall leave you to make your own experiments;—yet, ere you venture into the wilds of Taffyland, peruse and carry with you for your use and edification the following:—
TRIADS FOR TRAVELLERS.
Three mountains that every body goes up: Snowdon, Cadair Idris, and Penmaen Mawr.