ON THE LLEDR.
Not far below this pretty landscape cameo are the Falls of the Conway, where the river rushes on through a gorge of dark, sloping, almost columnar rocks, and then—divided by a tall crag, on which one or two small bushes have contrived to grow—bends and plunges down two steep descents to where a half-ruinous salmon leap brings to mind the eminence of the Conway as a fishing river. And next, the Fairy Glen! This is a genuine ravine, where the stream forces itself between riven cliffs, and flows in deep, rapid streaks of peaty-brown water among a wilderness of grey rocks, plunging downward, thereafter, into a wild glen overhung by woods. The name of the Fairy Glen would seem inappropriate enough to such a scene were it not that here, again, Nature has thrown all manner of rustic decorations about this frowning gorge. The sunlight, too, seems to fill the place in a strange, mystic way, so that the lichen-encrusted rocks are seen through a kind of blue, misty glamour, and there is a suggestion of rainbow colour over all.
ANOTHER VIEW IN THE LLEDR VALLEY.
From the road high above the Fairy Glen there is a fine prospect of the mountains. Moel Siabod seems to have come nearer, and the far distance is closed in by the Glyders, Tryfan, and the Carnedd Llewelyn range. Down in the valley is the Llyn-yr-Afanc, or the Beaver’s Pool, and nearer to Bettws-y-Coed the river is crossed by the fine span of the iron bridge which was built in the year of the battle of Waterloo.
FAIRY GLEN, BETTWS-Y-COED.
The CONWAY has no particular attractiveness as it passes Bettws, where David Cox’s famous signboard may still be seen at the Royal Oak Hotel. It has here a green margin of meadow-land, which grows broader as we proceed towards Llanrwst, a sweetly-placed little market town, to which small vessels seem to have made their way in the last century, for a sailor who penned a diary in 1769 wrote how “Llanrwst is situated in a very deep bottom on the river Conway, betwixt Denbigh hills and Carnarvon rocks, some of which appear to hang over the town. Nevertheless, we found a much better anchorage than we could have expected at such a bottom.”