CARNARVON CASTLE (p. [206]).
Throughout the whole length of Nant Francon the river OGWEN is a thin, quiet, winding, silvery stream, unsheltered by bush or tree; but as it approaches the Bethesda slate quarries it is shadowed by its first foliage, that seems designed to hide from it the gigantic outrage on which was built the scattered and rather extensive town of Bethesda, and which has made Lord Penrhyn one of the wealthiest members of the House of Lords. Below the fine bridge leading to the quarries the river is lost among deep woods; but, pursuing it further, one comes most unexpectedly on a long and romantic series of cascades, continuing until the Ogwen is lost to sight in a deep hollow filled with mist and foam. The river has a beautiful and picturesque bend as it passes behind the cottages of Bethesda, a mile or so lower down, and thenceforward it becomes a river something like the Llugwy in appearance, tumbling over short cataracts, or wandering deep among woods, or emerging now and again amid pleasant green spaces, its banks shaded by overhanging trees.
THE SWALLOW FALLS (p. [210]).
As Carnedd Dafydd, and its twin, Llewelyn, are left behind there comes in sight the steep side and dark, rounded summit of Penmaenmawr, and then, on an opposite and less conspicuous eminence, looking over Bangor and the Menai Strait, and surrounded by woods in which the Ogwen is for a while completely hidden, rises Penrhyn Castle, the seat of Lord Penrhyn, with one great square, turreted tower dominating all the country roundabout. Henceforth the river is little seen until it flows out, through a deep ravine, on to the broad, sandy flats which stretch from Bangor to Beaumaris, its short, swift, troubled life ending thus in sunlit peace.
The steep mountain-sides which hem in Lake Ogwen at its foot are so black, bare, rugged, and forbidding, as to suggest the skeleton of an unfinished world. A kindlier scenery opens out beyond the head of the lake, where the river LLUGWY—the first of the tributaries of the Conway which have now to be noticed—after wandering downwards from a small mountain tarn under the shadow of Carnedd Llewelyn, runs through a wild and fine pass to Capel Curig. The valley is hemmed in by the great mountains, and to the south rise the three peaks of Y Tryfan, with the Glyder-Fach in the hollow to its left.
At Capel Curig, where is Pont-y-Garth, the Llugwy is an inconspicuous stream, but it grows wider, and its valley becomes very beautiful, immediately after leaving that place, when it is joined by the waters from the two small lakes which make the best of all the foregrounds to Snowdon. Here is “a region of fairy beauty and of wild grandeur,” as George Borrow says. Moel Siabod, “a mighty mountain, bare and precipitous, with two peaks like those of Pindus, opposite Janina,” here hides its sternness amid woods of oak and fir. Above the lakes, all the peaks of Snowdon are in sight—Y Wyddfa, which is the summit; Lliwedd, “the triple-crested”; craggy Crib-Goch, advancing itself before the rest; and Crib-y-Ddysgyl. To the right of the valley, which has Moel Siabod on its left, there is a curving range of rocky heights, their harshness softened by bracken and dwarf shrubs, and beyond, and high above, is the stony wilderness of the Glyder-Fach.