Yet farther south are other evidences of Cardiff's great thirst. Our Taff is again enclosed, and flows through a second reservoir, proceeding out of it by a series of prepared waterfalls, not unpicturesque, though they have artificial flagged beds and precise parapets. Here, however, one may almost look one's last at Taff the pellucid. The area of toil and sophistication is at hand. Yet some four miles above Merthyr the river has one notable reach of beauty. There is a ruined turnpike house to hint of the time of "Rebecca," when this part of Wales rose in arms and fought toll-bars as ancient Wales fought the Normans of the Marches; and high above the wrecked house are some precipitous limestone cliffs, with jackdaws always circling about their crests. Taff lies in a deep bed here, with woods on the western slopes where its waters wash them. It rose in the old red sandstone of the Beacons: it has now come to the carboniferous limestone and to the coal-measures to which South Wales owes its phenomenal prosperity. Merthyr would be a pretty place if it were not sullied by smoke beyond redemption. The hills, studded with chimneys, cumber each other; and in all the adjacent hollows, high up and low down, are manufactories. The people wear clogs. As in other such busy centres, they seem happy enough, and by no means tearful about the local desecration of Nature. But it must be admitted that they are grimy, like their environment. Of all the large manufactories round Merthyr, those of the Dowlais Steel and Iron Works, two miles away (a constant ascent), are the most considerable. One may doubt, perhaps, if these are now the largest of their kind in the world, but they are still very extensive. A recent report tells us that they consist of eighteen blast furnaces, producing about 700 tons of iron and 2,400 tons of steel rails per week, and that their collieries can lift 3,700 tons of coal daily. Founded about a hundred and fifty years ago, they have been a staff of life to millions. Few sights of the kind are more impressive than the manipulation here of the huge cruses of molten steel, and the methodical treatment of the ores, which develop in a few hours into red-hot steel rails from thirty to sixty yards long; or than the cutting of these substantial rails into sections by a serrated disc which makes some 1,600 revolutions a minute. The "Dowlais Lights," as they are called, flash at times high over the mountains to the north. The landlord of the little inn at Devynnock called the writer out at night to see them. "It's a sign of rain, for certain," he said. Tradition locally lays down this law; but tradition often errs, and on this occasion the Dowlais lights, seen here twenty miles away, were, as it chanced, the augurs of a glorious autumnal morrow. [Illustration: LLANDAFF CATHEDRAL] [Illustration: NORTH DOOR]