"Whereabouts was it?" said I.
"Yonder," said the man, standing still and pointing to the right.
"Don't you see yonder brown spot in the valley? There the castle
stood."
"But are there no remains of it?" said I. "I can see nothing but a
brown spot."
"There are none, sir; but there a castle once stood, and from it
the place we came from had its name, and likewise the river that
runs down to Pont Erwyd."
"And who lived there?" said I.
"I don't know, sir," said the man; "but I suppose they were grand
people, or they would not have lived in a castle."
After ascending the hill and passing over its top, we went down its
western side and soon came to a black, frightful bog between two
hills. Beyond the bog and at some distance to the west of the two
hills rose a brown mountain, not abruptly, but gradually, and
looking more like what the Welsh call a rhiw, or slope, than a
mynydd, or mountain.
"That, sir," said my guide, "is the grand Plynlimmon."
"It does not look much of a hill," said I.
"We are on very high ground, sir, or it would look much higher. I
question, upon the whole, whether there is a higher hill in the
world.
