The Cambrian Directory [1800]; Or, Cursory Sketches of the Welsh Territories.: With a Chart, Comprehending at One View, the Advisable Route, Best Inns, Distances, and Objects Most Worthy of Attention. — John Shaqi
The Cambrian Directory [1800]; Or, Cursory Sketches of the Welsh Territories.: With a Chart, Comprehending at One View, the Advisable Route, Best Inns, Distances, and Objects Most Worthy of Attention.Anonymous
History
The Cambrian Directory [1800]; Or, Cursory Sketches of the Welsh Territories.: With a Chart, Comprehending at One View, the Advisable Route, Best Inns, Distances, and Objects Most Worthy of Attention.
Anonymous
Wales -- Guidebooks
This celebrated Bridge, so much the object of curiosity and admiration,
is so completely environed with trees, that many travellers, not intent
upon deep investigation, or in pursuit of nature’s landscapes, may pass
over it, without the least suspicion of the dreadful aperture, or the
ancient structure, that conveys them over the gulf. On the Eastern side
we descended a precipitous, and treacherous bank, consisting of slate
rock, or _laminac_, I should imagine, near a hundred feet: this is the
computed measurement; but the eye, confused by the awfulness of the
scene, loses its faculty of judging. From this spot, the vast chine, or
chasm, over which the bridge is thrown, is seen to great advantage: the
whole of this fissure was probably occasioned by some convulsion of
nature, as each indenture seems to correspond with the opposite
protuberance. Under the bridge, the river Mynach, in its confined
course, meeting with obstructions of massy rock, and fragments of
prodigious size, rushes through the chasm with irresistible violence.
This bridge is called in Welsh _Pont-ar-Fynach_, or Mynach Bridge: it
consists of two arches, one thrown over the other. The foundation of the
under one is of great antiquity, and vulgarly attributed to the invention
of the Devil: it is supposed to have been erected as far back as the year
1087, in the reign of William II., by the Monks of Strata Florida Abbey,
the ruins of which are still visible, about ten miles from hence. Gerald
mentions his passing over it, when he accompanied Baldwin, Archbishop of
Cambray, at the time of the crusades, in the year 1188, and in the reign
of Richard I. The original arch being suspected to be in a ruinous
condition, the present bridge was built over it, at the expence of the
county, in the year 1753.—The width of the chasm is estimated at about
thirty feet.
Our Ciceroni first conducted us to a fall on the river Rhyddol,
unobserved in Walker’s _Description of the Devil’s Bridge_, and unnoticed
by Warner. The character of this fall is remarkably singular: a huge
fragment of rock, projecting over the river for a considerable way,
precipitates the water in a singular, and almost inexpressible direction;
the rocks are occasionally variegated by the dark foliage of underwood,
and sometimes barren, rugged, and impending.
Description cannot suggest the full magnificence of the prospect which
spread before us, on our arrival at the grand fall of the Mynach; for
though it may paint the grandeur of the elegance of outline, yet it
cannot equal the archetypes in nature, or draw the minute features, that
reward the actual observer, at every new choice of his position:
reviewing this thundering cataract, in the leisure of recollection, these
nervous lines of Thomson seem to describe much of the scene:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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