CHAPTER XII: THE MOUNTAIN INN



[Greek text]
How sweet to minds that love not sordid ways
Is solitude!--MENANDER.

The Captain wandered despondingly up and down hill for several
days, passing many hours of each in sitting on rocks; making,
almost mechanically, sketches of waterfalls, and mountain pools;
taking care, nevertheless, to be always before nightfall in a
comfortable inn, where, being a temperate man, he whiled away the
evening with making a bottle of sherry into negus. His rambles
brought him at length into the interior of Merionethshire, the land
of all that is beautiful in nature, and all that is lovely in
woman.

Here, in a secluded village, he found a little inn, of small
pretension and much comfort. He felt so satisfied with his
quarters, and discovered every day so much variety in the scenes of
the surrounding mountains, that his inclination to proceed farther
diminished progressively.

It is one thing to follow the high road through a country, with
every principally remarkable object carefully noted down in a book,
taking, as therein directed, a guide, at particular points, to the
more recondite sights: it is another to sit down on one chosen
spot, especially when the choice is unpremeditated, and from
thence, by a series of explorations, to come day by day on