says Spenser, in the “Faërie Queene.” The pearl fishery had once a real importance. Sir Richard Wynn of Gwydir presented to the queen of Charles II. a Conway pearl, which afterwards adorned the regal crown. This was probably of a kind that was found higher up the river, at Trefriw. A more common variety was found in abundance on the bar, and the collection of the pearl-bearing mussels was for a long time a distinct and regular industry. “As for the pearls found in these mountainous rivers,” said a letter-writer of the seventeenth century, “they are very plentiful, and uncommonly large, though few of them well coloured. They are found in a large, black muscle, peculiar to such rivers. Several ladyes of this county and Denbighshire have collections of good pearle, found chiefly in the river Conway.”
Deganwy, “the place where the white waves break upon the shore,” was a royal residence from a very remote period. It had a castle, which is said to have been erected in the sixth century by Maelgwyn Gwynedd, and to have been destroyed by Llewelyn the Great, whose statue is to be seen in Conway town. “It was a noble structure,” says Giraldus Cambrensis, “and its possession was held to be of great importance to the English, so that Randal Blondevil, Earl of Chester, rebuilt it in 1210. King John encamped at Deganwy two years later, but was compelled to retreat with his army before Llewelyn. There were other royal retreats from Deganwy, before the fierce Welsh, in 1245, 1258, and 1262. There were “great ruines” of the castle in Leland’s time; but now it is with difficulty that any fragment is discerned. Deganwy itself has become a watering-place, a small rival to Llandudno, mainly attractive because it presents a magnificent view of the estuary of the Conway, and of the fine range of mountains which ends in Penmaenmawr.”
Llandudno, for the most part, occupies the flat and formerly marshy space between the Great and the Little Orme. It is altogether a favourable type of the modern watering-place; but it need not detain us here, for we have reached the point at which the river broadens out into Conway Bay, and is lost among the in-rushing waves of the Irish Sea.
THE BRIDGE, FROM CONWAY CASTLE.
RIVERS OF NORTH WALES.