The ascent here begins to be steep, and it is constant to the source. The colliery villages become less and less assertive, and the woods greener. By Coelbren a little stream hurries to the Tawe through one of those deep, thickly-treed glens which the Neath river knows so well. It is an enchanting spot, with the blue and green and russet of Craig-y-Nos across the valley to the north-west. The river gets quite near to the palace of our sweetest singer, whose conservatories can be seen gleaming for miles. In South Wales Patti holds a court other than that assured to her in all the world's capitals. She is at home here. Her photographs are in the shop-windows of Neath and Swansea, and so are the photographs of the various luxurious rooms of her mountain palace; and she is praised for other virtues than those that proceed from her entrancing throat. People wonder how she can isolate herself here, where collieries are not so remote that they cannot be seen. But that is Adelina Patti's affair, and has nothing to do with us. She is queen of the Tawe valley, in one sense, as well as the world's queen regnant of melody. At Craig-y-Nos, which is 700 feet above sea-level, Tawe is distant only five or six mountainous miles from its origin. It begins, like the Taff, with numerous slender rills from red cuttings in the stony sides of the bleak uplands, all hurrying together, as if anxious to compose a little strength with their divided weakness. But its chief source is the lonely tarn (to borrow the North-country word) of Lly-Fan Fawr, which never fails to keep it active. This is on the Brecknock Van. On the Carmarthen Van also there is a lake, Lly-Fan Fach, some two miles from the source of Tawe. From Lly-Fan Fach comes the Sawddy, one of the Towy's band of tributaries, which enters that river at Llangadock. * * * * * The /Towy/, which now claims our notice, in a far nobler river than the others treated in this chapter. From its start in the desolate wet uplands of Cardiganshire (less trodden than any other part of Great Britain) to the long channel south of Carmarthen, where it enters the bay of that name, it knows nothing of such pollution as spoils Tawe, Taff, and Neath. It is rural from first to last: savage almost in its upper reaches, beyond Ystradffin, where it can be explored only at some not inconsiderable risks, and where its first company of eager affluents rush to it from all sides in glens and defiles, as deep, craggy, and yet beautiful, as its own. Of its early affluents, the Doethiau certainly deserves particular mention. Hard by its junction with Towy is a strikingly picturesque wooded hill, one of Wales's many Dinases.