or Penygwryd, near Snowdon--that form so pleasant a feature among the mountains of England and Wales. There even was once a dancing saloon in the lonely recesses of Injebreck; and no one who loves mountains tolerates dancing in their secret recesses, unless indeed it be the fairies dancing their "ringlets to the whistling wind." Most people indeed who love Nature will avoid Mona in the "season"; but luckily the "season" is short. From October to Easter the lodging houses are empty, and the island lives its own peculiar life. It is remarkable, indeed, how little permanent harm has been done to its pleasant landscapes by this yearly incursion of the southern Goths and Vandals. Fashion has not dotted its hills with villas, as Windermere has been dotted, and to some extent Ambleside and Coniston. The two streams of life that meet here in summer flow together for a time side by side, but do not seem to commingle. Go there in spring when the fields are full of lambs, and the hedgerows are yellow with primroses. Climb the rolling moorlands that are still red with winter bents, and wander along the hills that drop into the sea so steeply between Peel and Bradda Head. Linger in the old churchyards at Kirk Maughold and Kirkmichael among the immemorial cross-slabs of a long since vanished race; sit among the ruins of St. Patrick's Island--broken cathedral and broken castle, old, mysterious round tower, and ruined pre-Conquest church--till the place is peopled again with dead voices and dead faces, and till the whole island Glows as if the Middle Age Were gorgeous upon earth again. [Illustration: DOUGLAS BAY (A MIDSUMMER NIGHT). A panoramic view of the town from Douglas Head.] You will receive no rude shock in the course of your wandering, nor necessarily encounter a single "tripper." In this way most certainly, but in this way alone, you will "pluck out the heart of [the] mystery" of pleasant, green "Ellan Vannin." CHAPTER II CONCERNING PEEL