Photo: Mr. Francis Bedford, Camden Road, N.
THE DRAWING ROOM, CARDIFF CASTLE.
Cardiff has every incentive and determination to go ahead. St. Mary’s, the main street, can boast of costly banks and hotels and a very great deal of traffic. It is singularly noisy at night; and that also, we presume, is evidence of the strong modern spirit of the place. The town in 1896 indulged in an Exhibition on such a scale that its loss may be computed in scores of thousands of pounds; but the Exhibition was an investment, and it is a proof of Cardiff’s wealth that it can afford thus to cast expectantly so many thousands upon the waters. The Marquess’s castle is as unique in its splendour as is Cardiff among Welsh towns in its development. Of its external towers, one, the Clock Tower (with many quaint, arrangements for spectacular effect), is as modern as the residential part of the building. The other, or Black Tower (though it is of white limestone), dates from early times. It is also known as the Duke Robert Tower, because it was here that Robert Duke of Normandy was, by his own brother, Robert of Gloucester, son of Henry I., confined for many years.
IN THE VALE OF NEATH.
Taff has much to be proud of as it glides into the sea past the castle, though it has, for miles and miles ere this, lost its crystal purity.
The river NEATH, like Taff, rises among lonely mountains, heather, bracken, and the bracing winds of the uplands. The three summits of the Fforest Fawr range—long-backed ridges, woeful to be lost upon—each give names to the tributaries that flow from them, and at Pont Neath Vaughan form the Neath river proper. Y-Fan-Nedd, Y-Fan-Llia, and Y-Fan-Dringarth thus beget the Little Neath (the “dd” in Welsh being equivalent to our “th”), the Llia, and the Dringarth. The two latter, after about five miles of independence, join just above Ystradfellte, where another Castell Coch reminds us that Wales had long ages of intestine and other strife ere she gave up unfurling the Red Dragon on her hilltops. We are here in the “fiery heart of Cambria,” where the rocks and morasses were such mighty fastnesses for the brave Welshmen of old. But these times are long past, and Cambria’s fiery heart may now be said to depend literally upon the fuel in the bowels of the land.