The Severn is no sooner left behind than the Breidden Hills, first glimpsed ten miles away and then lost, come again into view. They rise suddenly from the level with even more dramatic effect than the Wrekin; not of a greater height, rising only to 1200 feet, but of true mountainous character. The distance of seven miles separating them from the road, while not obscuring them, has the grand effect of blotting out all petty detail and giving the appearance of a huge, blue-black, and apparently unscalable mass. To give the last touch of theatrical effect, a monument tops the highest point; perhaps, the traveller thinks, the memorial of some hardy mountaineer who essayed to climb these heights and perished in his rashness. But it is nothing of the sort; only a pillar erected to keep green the memory of Rodney’s naval victories. “Colofn Rodney,” as the Welsh call it, otherwise “Rodney’s Pillar,” is inscribed in Welsh to the effect that The highest pillars will fall, The strongest towers decay; But the fame of Sir George Brydges Rodney shall increase continually and his good name shall never be obliterated. From behind “the Breidden,” as Salopians call the Hills, came the Welsh in olden times to plunder and commit outrages on these exposed frontiers; and the whole district remained a veritable Alsatia until the beginning of the seventeenth century; outlaws and freebooters, both in Shropshire and Montgomeryshire, the real authorities, who usually slew, but in their lighter moments and more kindly vein contented themselves with making sheriffs’ officers eat the writs they carried, seal and all; or just stripped the traveller and with an oath and the prick of a sword bade him begone. [Illustration: THE BREIDDEN HILLS.] The red rock that rises, tall, rugged, and precipitous behind Nesscliff village, and gives that place its name, was the fastness of one of the last of these gentry, Wild Humphry Kynaston, who, when forced from his seat at Middle Castle and outlawed, lived in a cave here and began a career as wildly romantic as that of Robin Hood.