The coast is alive with sea-birds, kittiwakes, razorbills, guillemots,
solan geese, puffin, shag, cormorant, and tern; and collections of
these birds’ eggs can be obtained at a very small cost in the town.
An ingenious provision of Nature saves the eggs from being carried by
the raging winds from the ledges of rock on which they are laid, when
the mother-bird is not sitting. If, for instance, a guillemot’s egg
be looked at, it will be seen that it is so balanced that the wind,
catching it, spins it round on its centre of gravity, and does not
obtain sufficient resistance to carry it away bodily, and precipitate
it into the sea.
There are objects of considerable archæological interest in Holy
Island, and these are the Cytiau’r Gwyddelod, or habitations of the
Irish. There are several collections, and some were explored by the
Hon. W. O. Stanley in 1871.
They are strewn over the side of Holyhead mountain, but there are
others by Porth Dafarch and Mynydd Celyn.
The sites of ancient habitations have been selected for shelter from
the prevailing winds, and the huts are usually grouped together forming
villages of from twelve to fifty huts. They are always protected from
hostile attack by rude walls of dry masonry or by precipitous rocks.
They are circular, and have slabs of granite set on end to face them
within and without. The entrances are to the south. The roofs were
constructed of poles resting on the low walls, brought together in
the middle, and thatched or covered with turf. The walls of the huts
enclose a space of from fifteen to twenty feet in diameter, and the
doorway is formed of two upright stones of about four feet high, upon
which formerly rested a stone lintel.
Some of these huts were dwelling-houses, others served merely as
kitchens, and some were sweating or bathing chambers, by the production
of steam by throwing water over heated stones.
Mr. Stanley found bronze weapons, jet necklaces, ornamented
spindle-whorls, stone lamps, and moulds for bronze buttons. The
abundance of articles discovered in these dwellings is very unusual and
seems to point to their having been left in a hurry.
There is a strong camp, Caer-y-Twr, on Holyhead mountain, facing east,
and about two-thirds of the way up to the summit from the town. It is
surrounded by a rude wall of dry masonry, following the ridge of the
rock, which in places is almost perpendicular. The entrance is steep
and seems to have been defended by hornwork.
There is a narrow cleft in the face of the mountain to the west, above
débris of rock that has fallen in some convulsion of nature, leaving a
perpendicular face of rock two hundred feet in height. This gap forms a
passage through which only one person could pass at a time, and a steep
path winds to it between rock faces. It may have served as a postern to
the camp.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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