It was between the two lakes Peris and Padarn, and at the new village of Llanberis, that the late Poet Laureate foregathered, in his youth, with his friend Leonard, who sang of “all the cycle of the golden year”:—
“We crost
Between the lakes, and clambered half-way up
The counter side . . . . . .
. . . . . . and high above, I heard them blast
The steep slate quarry, and the great echo flap
And buffet round the hill from bluff to bluff.”
The first recorded ascent of Snowdon seems to have been made from the same spot in 1639. “At daybreak on the 3rd of August,” says the seventeenth-century mountaineer, “having mounted our horses, we proceeded to the British Alps.”
After the mountains, Dolbadarn Castle and Ceunant Mawr—the Waterfall of the Great Chasm—are the principal attractions of Llanberis. The cataract is upwards of 60 feet in height. It tumbles over a few ledges, rushes down a wide slope, and falls into a pool below. The castle is singularly well placed for picturesque effect. The one tower now remaining occupies the whole of the surface of a rocky eminence, which presents a precipitous front to the lake, and has a marvellous background of high-peaked mountains. Often enough it can be seen only through mists, or driving sheets of rain, for Llanberis seems to be the home of the rain-cloud and the cradle of the storm.
An unspeakable lumber of waste slates stretches out into the lakes as we proceed downwards, but does not interfere with the splendid view of Snowdon which is to be obtained at the point where the Seiont leaves Llyn Padarn. Wooded cliffs and heathery crags, and peeps of wild moorland, and rugged country that is redeemed from desolateness by frequent white cottages, make fine pictures for us as we proceed down the river towards Carnarvon. Here and there the stream is divided by great masses of stone, past which it races in order to drive some watermill, half hidden in leaves. There are reedy pools, in which a wild swan may occasionally be seen, and then willowy marshes; and so, bending this way and that, now bursting into the open sunlight, and then plunging into woodland shade, and always noisy and impetuous, the little river hastens on until it joins the tide, issuing into the Menai Strait between the grimly beautiful walls of Carnarvon Castle and a wooded bank. Only as to its interior can the castle now be properly described as a ruin. Restoration has here taken the form of rebuilding, and this proud stronghold is now immeasurably more complete as to its outward appearance than it can have been when Edward I. exhibited from its walls the prince who, having first seen the light only a few hours before, was “not only born in Wales but could not speak a word of the English tongue.”