It is a bare, ordinary-looking town, this Barmouth, when surveyed from the level of its lower streets; but there is an unapproachable dignity, beauty, and charm in the wide, level stretch of sand and water which lies between here and Arthog, which winds inland among the brown mountain-slopes, which broadens outward to Cardigan Bay. The bridge is a curious and useful rather than a pleasant feature of the landscape. It carries a railway that branches off to Dolgelley on the one hand, and to Glandovey and South Wales on the other. Fortunately, it lies low down, and close to the water, as it were, its central portion being occasionally raised for the admission of ships, of a tonnage, however, that is marvellously small. From its further side, where the sand has gathered into hillocks, crowned by long, waving, rank grass, the town of Barmouth, with its vast hill of Craig Abermaw, brings into mind the castle of Chillon and its surroundings. It seemed poor and common enough, away there on the other side of the bridge; but from this point it is graceful, noble, almost sublime. * * * * * The grand castle of Harlech looks out on to the waters about midway in that waste of shore which divides Barmouth from Portmadoc. The castle has long been a ruin, but, all things considered, it has been magnificently preserved. It had the fortune to escape the dismantling which was so nearly universal during the Civil Wars. Later times have been less considerate, for many of the houses roundabout have been built from the stone and timber of the fortress; yet, looking at it from a distance, the place still seems to be intact, and grandly formidable in its strength and its situation. From Portmadoc it is the principal feature of the landscape as the eye sweeps round the fine curve of the bay. The interest of Portmadoc itself lies in the incomparable view of the Snowdon range which is to be obtained therefrom, and in a curious association with Shelley. A huge alluvial plain, the Traeth Mawr, or Great Sand, sheltered by an irregular semicircle of hills, makes an impressive foreground. Here one might expect to hear tales of that Prince Madoc who is alleged to have preceded Columbus, by a huge interval, in the discovery of America; but Portmadoc, with its long, low line of railway across the Traeth Bach, its small schooners laden with slate, its rows of houses struggling about the hillside, its active industry, its bridges and quays, is a town of quite modern date, its history extending backward only to the end of the last century, and its name being derived, not from the adventurous prince whom Southey has made the subject of an epic, but from an energetic Mr. Maddocks, who reclaimed 2,000 acres of good land from the sea, and carried a mile-long mole of stone across the great estuary into which the little river Glaslyn flows. Portions of Portmadoc are at this day some two or three feet below the sea-level.