for a summer holiday, let us recommend South Wales. The climate is Devonian, with a tinge of Scotland. The Flora also is intermediate between these two regions. For the antiquary, again, Siluria has many interesting memories. King Arthur and his Round Table, held “at old Caerleon upon Usk”—that town itself, with Menevia (St. David’s), the seats of British Bishops before Augustine—the marches of Wales—its old castles, such as Oystermouth and Caerphilly, the latter, with the exception of Windsor, probably the largest of any of which we have remains—its churches, with their plain, short, strong towers, which the villagers could hold out against an enemy: these are some of the curiosities of the country well worthy of examination.
Tourists and guide-books are not as yet common in Siluria, so you have the additional pleasure of treading upon comparatively unknown ground. As for national customs, the old custom of a lad wrapped in a sheet, carrying round on a pole a horse’s head tricked out with ribbons, which is called “Mary Lloyd” (i. e., Grey Mary), is indeed only to be witnessed on Christmas evenings; but, in summer, there are “eisteddfods” in plenty for those who care to revive the ghosts of the bards. Fishing, too, can be had; and no one need be at a loss to fill a sketch-book in this aboriginal country.
Geologically considered, the country of the Silures is like a poached egg. In the centre (corresponding to Glamorgan) is a tract of “black country,” the coal-measures, which we may fancy the yolk; round this runs the red conglomerate cornstone and marl of Brecon, Monmouth, and Herefordshire, for the white of the egg. It is in the yolk that the chief commercial interests centre. This is the realm of numberless steam-engines, pits, ruined workings, canals and railroads. Aberdare, with a population of 32,000, having quadrupled its numbers in an ordinary life-time, may be taken as the typical town of this “black country,” with its terraces of white-washed cottages, each exactly like its neighbour, hastily run up round three or four immense cinder-heaps surmounted by a couple of tall chimneys enveloped in smoke-wreaths.
There is a core of shops and better houses in Aberdare, but the town proper is made up of one of these collieries in its volcanic-looking district, succeeded by another, and then another, more straggling than either of the others, fading away into the barren common, with just one or two deserted ventures near it to point the exact demarcation.
Take Merthyr Tydfil again, and if you substitute iron works for collieries, terraces of cottages, rising in tiers round a central pandemonium of smoke, flame and ashes, die away similarly amongst the adjoining hills. Owing to the fact of steam having only recently opened up these mineral districts to commercial enterprise, the houses, the society, the sectarianism, the willingness to be deluded by any popular phantasy, Mormonism, electro-biology, &c., are all to be referred to the latest type of modern civilisation, and correspond in great measure to the social life of the colonial gold districts. Industry, enterprise, and money-making, may be beheld on a gigantic scale in these regions of Siluria. Its natural features often perish in a few years when they once come within the coils of railroads and canals. “Tips,” or deserted works, raise enormous accumulations of cinders—artificial tertiary deposits—which, in two or three years, lose their hardness of outline, and are gradually clothed with verdure. Flat commons are turned into “tips,” till they resemble the depressions of a chalk country were it not for the traitorous black dust. In a few months tunnels and cuttings, for a new mineral line will destroy the character of hills which have been familiar to untold centuries.
Round these mountains of the old red formation, which commence as the coal measures fall off, are to be found some of the finest atmospheric and landscape effects in the kingdom. Hills with bold outlines—swelling up to take the sun’s light or catch the fleecy vapours, and descending into wooded valleys, thickly interspersed—are characteristic of the formation. Over all the outskirts of the “black country” a lover of Nature will observe manifold changes of the skies—sunsets brilliant as those which Turner loved to paint—clouds of many tinged splendours, grandly massed like armies assaulting the mountain tops round which they hang. Far in the distant valley you may see the river which carries off the hill streams, flashing over its rocky bed, but no murmur reaches this high ground. The slender wild flowers and weather-beaten lichens speak only of summer peace and rest. The bee seeking the mountain thyme is the last straggler from the busy, industrial world behind you. Very beautiful is Siluria in the sunshine; nor is it altogether devoid of interest at night. The screech-owl lends the requisite solemnity to the scene—then the distant river becomes audible on the fitful evening breeze—
The mountains, more by blackness visible,
And their own size, than any outward light,
leave an indelible photograph on the memory. No one who rests awhile on one of the higher mountains will then regret his holiday spent in Siluria, as he overlooks
From high, the sullen water far beneath
On which a dull red image of the moon
Lies bedded, changing oftentimes its form,
Like an uneasy snake.
