SNOWDON, FROM CRIB-GOCH.] It is a land of cataracts all round about; but to reach the finest of those one must leave the river Wnion and ascend the Mawddach valley, up the beautiful Ganllwyd Glen, and so to the gold mines. Rely not too implicitly on those learned books which would instruct the confiding stranger wandering amid these mountainous wildernesses. "There are three fine Falls on the Mawddach," one reads in a book of considerable geographical pretensions--"one of 60 feet in Dolmelynllyn Park, another of 60 feet called the Mawddach Fall, the third, of 150 feet, called the Pistyll-y-Cain." "I wonder," said an American humorist, "whether it is worth while knowing so much that is not so." The Rhaiadr-y-Mawddach--over which, at this stage, flows the river that is shortly to broaden out into the grandest estuary in Wales--descends, in two leaps, into a large and magnificent basin, about which the rocks and trees have arranged themselves into a noble amphitheatre. The Precipice Walk is not far away. One may behold all the Snowdon region from this dizzy height on the open hillside; the Ganllwyd valley opens out below; the Arans tower upwards to the right; and beyond the village of Llanfachreth, looking northward, rises the grand mass of Rhobell Fawr, its head half-hidden in a cloud, "that moveth altogether, if it move at all." And as for the Pistyll-y-Cain and the Rhaiadr-Du, "the black cataract," the one, as its name indicates, is the fall of the river Cain, and the other is the fall of the Camlan, less broad, less precipitous, at the first glance less impressive, than its more renowned rival, but quite wonderfully beautiful in its surroundings, its rocks and woodlands, its dual leap, and many windings, and numerous tumbling streams. Says a Welsh proverb: "There is only one prettier walk in Wales than the road from Dolgelley to Barmouth. It is the road from Barmouth to Dolgelley." The adjective is ill-chosen. Not prettiness, but a calm majesty, is the characteristic of the rich scenery of the valley of the Mawddach. When the tide is up, the river between Penmaenpool and Barmouth is like a chain of lakes among bold and craggy heights, sloping brown moorlands, and terraced woods. One is reminded sometimes of Switzerland and sometimes of the Rhine. It is advisable to ascend the river, as Wordsworth did, in a boat. The poet was at Barmouth in 1824, when he rowed up "the sublime estuary, which may compare with the finest in Scotland." One is always driven back upon these comparisons. The estuary of the Mawddach arouses sensations of strangeness and unexpectedness. Even amid the grandeur and the beauty of North Wales, it seems to belong to some other country, and almost to a land of dreams. It may have been some recollection of rowing upwards towards Penmaenpool that inspired the first and greatest of the Lake poets with two of his most splendid lines:--