sombre, domineer over the roofs around them. One or two others of a less
puritan design, and not out of character with the church on a knoll a
furlong off, compensate their severer rivals. The shape of the village
is determined by the narrow ridge of terra firma, the mere heaping of the
tides, between the quaking marsh and the encroaching sea. The nidus of
the present settlement is the tiny hamlet of Old Borth, perched on a spur
of the promontory, and well out of reach of flood tides. We are not sure
that the mother may not outlive her colony, unless substantial measures
are taken to guard against another 30th of January. Near Old Borth,
through a gap in the hills, comes the River Lery, a trout-stream known to
our anglers, thanks again to Sir Pryse who owns it. It races bubbling
round the furze-clad knoll, whose Welsh name is translated Otter's
Island, on which stands the church, and then is silenced in a blank
straight-cut channel, which conveys it through the marsh into the estuary
at Ynyslas. Up the gorge of the Lery runs the railway, which carried us
so often past the massive church and steep pine-grown graveyard of
Langfihangel-geneur-glyn, and across the broad meadows of Bow Street, to
the civilisation of Aberystwith. For Aberystwith was our Capua, and used
to draw large parties on many a blank afternoon for marketing or
amusement.

Then there was the beach, four miles of it, from the rocks of Borth Head,
where the waves could be watched breaking on the seaweed-covered reef,
and sending up columns of white spray against the black face of the
cliffs, away to the yellow sand dunes near the Dovey's mouth, and the
reaches of wet sands where we noted on summer days "the landscape winking
through the heat," almost with the effect of a mirage. These sands, firm
and sound under foot, were a famous walking-ground at all times; but they
changed their character very much with the seasons; at one time
retreating and laying bare a beach of shingle under the pebble ridge; at