I walked a little way forward and
then stopped, as I had done at the bridge in the dale, and looked
to the east, over a low stone wall.
Before me lay the sea or rather the northern entrance of the Menai
Straits. To my right was mountain Lidiart projecting some way into
the sea; to my left, that is to the north, was a high hill, with a
few white houses near its base, forming a small village, which a
woman who passed by knitting told me was called Llan Peder Goch or
the Church of Red Saint Peter. Mountain Lidiart and the Northern
Hill formed the headlands of a beautiful bay into which the waters
of the Traeth dell, from which I had come, were discharged. A
sandbank, probably covered with the sea at high tide, seemed to
stretch from mountain Lidiart a considerable way towards the
northern hill. Mountain, bay and sandbank were bathed in sunshine;
the water was perfectly calm; nothing was moving upon it, nor upon
the shore, and I thought I had never beheld a more beautiful and
tranquil scene.
I went on. The country which had hitherto been very beautiful,
abounding with yellow corn-fields, became sterile and rocky; there
were stone walls, but no hedges. I passed by a moor on my left,
then a moory hillock on my right; the way was broken and stony; all
traces of the good roads of Wales had disappeared; the habitations
which I saw by the way were miserable hovels into and out of which
large sows were stalking, attended by their farrows.
"Am I far from Llanfair?" said I to a child.
"You are in Llanfair, gentleman," said the child.
A desolate place was Llanfair. The sea in the neighbourhood to the
south, limekilns with their stifling smoke not far from me. I sat
down on a little green knoll on the right-hand side of the road; a
small house was near me, and a desolate-looking mill at about a
furlong's distance, to the south. Hogs came about me grunting and
sniffing. I felt quite melancholy.
"Is this the neighbourhood of the birth-place of Gronwy Owen?" said
I to myself. "No wonder that he was unfortunate through life,
springing from such a region of wretchedness."
Wretched as the region seemed, however, I soon found there were
kindly hearts close by me.
As I sat on the knoll I heard some one slightly cough very near me,
and looking to the left saw a man dressed like a miller looking at
me from the garden of the little house, which I have already
mentioned.
I got up and gave him the sele of the day in English. He was a man
about thirty, rather tall than otherwise, with a very prepossessing
countenance.
