The valley of the Wye again broadens, and the river flows in graceful curves through the meadows, guarded on either hand by cliffs and woods. The river is here a tidal-stream, having a rise of twelve feet, so that it is now a strong current, flowing full and swift between grassy banks, and anon is a shrunken creek, fringed by broad borders of mud. The railway on the eastern bank runs over the meadows and through occasional tunnels in the spurs of the cliffs. The high-road climbs the hill on the western bank, known as the Wynecliff, from the top of which there is a grand view over the valley and to the southward towards and beyond Chepstow. This cliff rises nine hundred feet above the river, and is the great monarch of a realm of crags that poke up their heads in all directions. Across the Wye, on a tongue of land projecting into the stream, Sir John Wyntour in the Civil War, with one hundred and eighty Royalists, hastily built a fort to command the river. Before their intrenchments were complete the enemy in superior force attacked and completely routed them; but twenty escaped, and Wyntour, cutting his way through the assailants' lines, took refuge in the beetling crags behind known as the Tidenham Rocks. The cavalry pursued him, when he forced his horse down a part somewhat less precipitous than the rest, reached the bank in safety, and escaped by swimming his horse over the river. The precipice is still known as Wyntour's Leap. Below, the Wye flows through Chepstow, with iron bridges spanning it to carry the road and railway across. The main part of the town on the western part is built upon a slope that in places descends somewhat rapidly to the river. Parts of the old walls are still preserved, strengthened at intervals by round towers. Chepstow has its ruined church, once a priory, within which Henry Marten the regicide was buried after twenty years' imprisonment in the castle. [Illustration: CHEPSTOW CASTLE.]