“I begin this record in the Island of Anglesea, where we have arrived after our fortnight’s wanderings in the more mountainous districts of the mainland. Anglesea, I am informed, is chiefly famous for its pigs and its wild ducks. So far as I have yet explored it, I find it flat and desolate enough; but I have been educated in Irish landscapes, and don’t object to flatness when combined with desolation. I like these dreary meadows, these black stretches of melancholy moorland, these wild lakes and lagoons. “At the present moment I am encamped in a spot where, in all probability, I shall remain for days. I came upon it quite by accident, about midday yesterday, when on my way to the market town of Pencroes; or rather, when I imagined that I was going thither, while I had in reality, after hesitating at three cross roads, taken the road which led in exactly the opposite direction. The way was desolate and dreary beyond measure--stretches of morass and moorland on every side, occasionally rising into heathery knolls or hillocks, or strewn with huge pieces of stone like the moors in Cornwall Presently the open moorland ended, and we entered a region of sandy hillocks, sparsely ornamented here and there with long harsh grass. If one could imagine the waves of the ocean, at some moment of wild agitation, suddenly frozen to stillness, and retaining intact their tempestuous forms, it would give some idea of the hillocks I am describing. They rose on every side of the road, completely shutting out the view, and their pale livid yellowness, scarcely relieved with a glimpse of greenness, was wearisome and lonely in the extreme. As we advanced among them, the road we were pursuing grew worse and worse, till it became so choked and covered with drifted sand as to be hardly recognizable, and I need hardly say that it was hard work for one horse to pull the caravan along; more than once, indeed, the wheels fairly stuck, and Tim and I had to pull with might and main to get them free. “We had proceeded in this manner for some miles, and I was beginning to realize the fact that we were out of our reckoning, when, suddenly emerging from between two sand-hills, I saw a wide stretch of green meadow land, and beyond it a glorified piece of water. The sun was shining brightly, the water sparkled like a mirror, calm as glass, and without a breath. As we appeared, a large heron rose from the spot in the water-side where we had been standing Still as a stone, without a sound Above his dim blue shade, and sailed leisurely away. Around the lake, which was about a mile in circumference, the road ran winding till it reached the further side, where more sand-hills began; but between these sand-hills I caught a sparkling glimpse of more water, and (guided to my conclusion by the red sail of a fishing-smack just glimmering in the horizon line) I knew that further water was--the sea.