In the rear of this fortified hill extends the region eloquently called the “World’s End,” where infrequent tracks lead to nowhere in particular, and the craggy descent of one hill but to the immediate toilsome ascent of another. Those who named the “World’s End,” named it well. The ruined Castle itself on this blusterous height is only a matter of rude walls; shapeless but for a tall fragment that shoots up above the rest and shows against the sky as you near the summit, like some gigantic cockerel in the act of crowing. Who built the Castle and who destroyed it are equally uncertain matters. Eliseg, Prince of Powis, occupied it in the eighth century and Gruffydd ap Madoc five hundred years later; that false Gruffydd who sided with the English under Henry III., and, later, founded Valle Crucis Abbey for the expiation of that and many other sins and wickednesses. But when these walls were unroofed, and by whom, no man knows. [Illustration: LLANGOLLEN.] The only architectural gem in these surroundings is that Abbey, two miles away in the Vale of the Cross, a transverse valley opening on to the Dee. There its ruins still nestle among the trees, just as Turner has pictured them, surrounded by the most fertile land within many miles. Men of Wrath might build themselves impregnable castles on shivery hill-tops, but holy monks knew a better way, and mortified the flesh in the fruitful and sheltered lowlands, where the fishponds were unfailing, the kine came lowing into byre at eventide, the corn was gathered in its season, and the fruit ripened early on sunny walls. But the habitations of wrathy and peaceable are alike overthrown, and both are the sport of the excursionist and the amateur photographer.