Scarcely a house is to be seen, for the new hotel and its surroundings lie hidden by the bend of the shore; it seems a valley of the dead. Yet before the year 1880, in the Valley of Llanwddyn, as it was called, a village of 500 inhabitants existed; and a church and chapels, inn, and village street, farms and cornfields flourished where now stands that great expanse of water. A quiet, secluded folk they were, knowing little English and even less of the ambitions and needs of the great industrial cities with one of which they were to be brought into such close touch. Quietly they lived and quietly they went to rest under the shadow of their grey church tower among the hills. But meantime that great busy monster, the city of Liverpool, was crying out for more water. A huge reservoir must be secured, and since no other was available, some mountain valley, shut in on all sides, must be turned into a lake for the purpose. The news fell like a thunderbolt on the peaceful valley-dwellers. In vain they were told of compensation, of new and more comfortable houses to be built for them on the wooded ridge above the lake. To the old people the whole thing came upon them as nothing less than a devastation like that which overtook Pompeii of old. One old dame, indeed, is said to have chosen death by drowning rather than leave the roof of her ancestors, and a scene of actual violence occurred before she could be removed. They tell us that a sailor, a native of Llanwddyn, returned after a lengthy absence to visit his home. You can imagine his feelings when, as he climbed the pass and began the steep descent, he saw his native valley transformed into an immense lake. We, too, as we pass along its shores and gaze into the watery depths, may see, with fancy’s eye, the smiling cottage, the cheerful little farm, the sunny gardens, lying buried amid the slimy water-weeds. There stood the old church, founded in the sixth century, and rebuilt by the famous Knights of Jerusalem in the twelfth, whose bell “jangled for loyalty with such strange noise and good affection,” when Beaufort made his progress through Wales in the days of James II. Now that little belfry lies silent far below the surface. These are thoughts that tend to sadness, however, and we may cheer ourselves with a funny tale told of the workmen who were building the huge dam by which the water is pent in. Mr. Baring-Gould tells it as follows: “Now, it fell out that when the dam was in course of construction, there was a stone in the river called Carreg yr Ysbryd, or the Ghost Rock, and it had to be removed. This was supposed to cover an evil spirit that had been laid and banned beneath it. The Welsh labourers engaged on the work would have nothing to do with shifting the block, but the English navvies had no scruples, and they blasted the rock, and with crowbars heaved out of place the fragments that remained.