"It is a scene of unparalleled beauty, whichever way one turns; whether to the sea, out beyond the sandy beach at the foot of Castle Rock, running far away, a sheet of intensest blue, until it meets the pale sapphire of the sky; or whether toward the mountains of the north, Snowdon, the snow-crowned king of them all, rising in matchless majesty above his satellites; or to the landward where the tiny village nestles at the foot of craglike hills; or to the westward where the great promontory of Lleyn stretches away, throwing here and there into the sky its isolated peaks, so full of savage sternness tempered with weird beauty." Verily, these misty days in Britain often hide visions of beauty from one's eager eyes. We will ask little of the story of Harlech, but it is a stirring one. It saw strenuous times as a stronghold of Owen Glendwr, who captured it in 1404 and held it against the forces of Henry IV., who re-took the castle four years later, driving the Welsh prince into the mountains. Here came Margaret, the queen of the Sixth Henry, during the war of the Roses, and the castle yielded, only after a long siege, to the onslaught of the adherents of the House of York. Indeed, Harlech was the last fortress in England to hold out for the Lancastrian cause. But far more memorable than the siege are the wild swinging cadences of the "March of the Men of Harlech," to which the conflict gave birth. During the civil war, the castle was the last in Wales to hold out for King Charles, and its story closes with its surrender to the army of the Commonwealth in 1647. The rain ceases shortly after we leave Harlech, and the air becomes clear, though the sky is still overcast. It is fortunate, for we see some of the wildest and most impressive of Welsh scenery. Great clifflike hills, splashed with red shale and purple heather or clad in the somber green of the pines, rise abruptly from the roadside. At Beddgelert the beauty culminates in one of the finest scenes in Wales. The valley, a plot of woods and meadows, is surrounded on every hand by the giant hills, whose sides glow with red and purple rock which crops out among the scattered pines that climb to the very crests. Two clear, dashing mountain streams join their waters to form the river Glaslyn, which winds through a mighty gorge to the sea; and alongside the river runs the perfect road over which we have just been coursing. The Royal Goat, right by the roadside, invites us to pause for our late luncheon; a charming old-fashioned inn, odd as its name, but homelike and hospitable. At Beddgelert the beauty begins to fade and one sees only commonplace country and barren hills until he reaches Carnarvon. [Illustration: ON THE RIVER LLEDR, WALES. From Original Painting by Daniel Sherrin.]