This it is which crowns the Wye as fairest of English rivers by a practically indisputable title. So, carrying thus the Elan and the spare water of its many lakes with it, the Wye thunders on in rocky channels or heaves in wide swirling pools, beneath woods of oak and ash and larch, with the green or purple crests of the great hills looming high above. Plunging past Doldowlod and Llysdinam it receives the sprightly Ithon, which, born in the Kerry hills and gathering in its course half the waters of Radnorshire, has twisted between its red crumbly banks with much sound and laughter through 50 miles of that most delectable little county. Dividing Brecon here from Radnor, two unknown shires that outside North Wales and the Lake District it would be hard to match, counted as one, for their high qualities of form and detail, the Wye rages down those jagged stairways known as "Builth rocks," and noted as a famous stretch of salmon water. Here on the western bank a large tributary, and itself at times no mean salmon river, the Irfon comes pouring in its amber bog-fed streams. Born far away in the very heart of the high moors, within hail of the resounding struggles of the infant Towy in the gorges of Fanog; cradled in unvisited hollows beneath raven-haunted crags of old Silurian rock; fretting amid the lush bracken glades and indigenous mountain oaks of Abergwessin and "the steps of the Wolf," this bewitching stream drives downward through a rich and narrow vale encompassed by lofty hills, till, fuller by a half-score of mountain brooks, it meets the Wye near that historic spot where Llewelyn the Third, the last Prince of Wales, fell in battle at an unknown soldier's hand. Flowing under the many-arched stone bridge of Builth, that ancient little mart of sheep and cattle, and receiving the Edw from Radnor Forest, the Wye now enters on perhaps the most inspiring of all its upper reaches. For here on the Radnor shore the bold ridge of Aberedw lifts its [Illustration: THE WYE, ROSS, HEREFORDSHIRE] [Illustration]