The Argosy — page 140: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

— ewer ~~ 130 Round about Barmouth. late talented William Duthie, who frequently contnbuted to the Argosy up to the time of his death in 1870. Just as those old warriors gazed upon the scene then, so they might gaze now. Immediately before.us stretched a long flat plain, which at one time, you would almost think, must have been covered by the sea. This great plain was bound by the grand chain of mountains; in a direct line with the castle was Snowdon, grandest and most massive of all; and the second Wonder of Wales mentioned in this paper. To-day the mountains, like the sea, were no two moments alike: the mist which partly enveloped them, shifting from one to another, varying their shapes, now concealing and now disclosing; until you could almost fancy that the Old Man of the Mountains must be rattling about his dominions in a vapoury chariot. The sun would throw his beams now here, now there, as the light clouds intervened; so that a mountain would be now in sunshine and now in shade, producing almost the impression of a moving panorama. How silent and splendid they looked, those hills, waiting in patience their day of doom ! Suddenly in the distance a small white thread trailed along the landscape, like a pale serpent stealing quietly upon its foe. Ah! here was a sight those great men of a past age never witnessed; never dreamed of. With all their mighty powers they never dreamed of the mightier power of the steam-engine, which has done more than any other earthly power to change the face of the globe from what it then was to what itis now. Above and around us, wheeled hundreds of rooks and jackdaws ; now darkening the air and causing the old ruin to echo with their hoarse chatter ; now clustering upon a tower, and holding to all appearance grave and weighty consultations. Indeed, from the large amount of noise and disputing going on, and the small amount of apparent result, we concluded that this old tower repre- sented the houses of parliament of the bird kingdom, and these noisy debaters its members. But the quickly passing time compelled us to quit this magic scene and return to the station. There we surveyed the scene under a different aspect. We were now in the valley, looking upwards instead of downwards. How grand and hoary was the old ruin! what a fine, extensive, magnificent ruin it 1s! How exercised in their poetical imaginations the old Welsh bards must feel as they meet here once a year at the Eisteddfod, and hold forth between the four grey walls of the grass-grown courtyard: or what we may now style the courtyard, though it was not so in the days gone by. Around us were the hills, many of them covered with the sombre Scotch firs; and the smoke from the cottages in the plain ascended in a blue mist, which entwined about the trees and seemed to give them a little of that warmth and friendly feeling towards mankind they appear so much to need. It was the hour of gloaming: here and there a woodcutter and his dog; ECOMICOOOKS. CO