The view from Hollymead House--better still from a high hill or "tump" above it--took in the valley of the river where it enters the carboniferous _strata_ near Kerne bridge. There was no Kerne bridge then; the stream being crossed by ford and ferry, a mile further up. Looking is that direction, in the foreground was Coppetwood Hill, an oblong eminence embraced by one of the great sinuosities of the river, more than six miles in the round and less than one across the neck or isthmus. At this neck, perched on a spur of the hill o'erhanging the stream, stood a vast pile of building, the castle of Goodrich, on whose donjon floated a flag long ere Norman baron set foot on the soil of England. For there the Saxon Duke Godric lorded it over his churls and swineherds; his iron rule at the Conquest replaced by that of the Marshalls, and later the Talbots, alike stern and severe. Looking beyond, and north-westward, a wide stretch of country came under the eye, thickly wooded and undulating, the ancient kingdom of Erchyn-- now called Archenfield--backed in the far distance by a horizon of hills, many with a mountain aspect, and some real mountains, as the curious Saddlebow, with a depression or "col" between its twin summits; Garway, the Cerriggalch, and the long dark range of the Hatterals. To the west was a very conglomeration of mountains, seemingly crowded against one another, yet all apart, each distinguishable by an outline and aspect of its own. Most conspicuous of these, the conical Sugarloaf, the two Skyrrids--one of them named Holy Mountain--and the Blorenge, all towering above the town of Abergavenny, which is surrounded and embraced by them as the arena of an amphitheatre by its outer and more elevated circle. Sweeping round the sky line, north and north-east the eye was met by many a bold projection, as the Longmynds and Clee hills, with their blue basalt, and the Haugh wood, summit of the famed Silurian upcast of Woolhope. Farther on to the east the Malvern Beacons of true mountain aspect, remarkable from their isolation, but still more in that there the geologist can see rocks the earliest stratified on earth, some metamorphosed, and all trace of stratification destroyed; while there, too, are visible the rocks of igneous agency, upheaved both by plutonic and volcanic forces--the gneisses, basalts, syenites, and granites. Eastward over the Forest edge could be seen, extending far as vision's verge, the wide plains of Worcester and Gloucester--as said, an ancient sea bed--through which now flows the yellow Severn; and on a clear day bends and reaches of this grand river might be distinguished glistening, gold-like, in the sun; the level expanse of its valley diversified by several isolated and curious eminences--hills and ridges--as May and Breddon due east, and, more to the south, the Mendips and Cotswolds.