The river /Seiont/ is only about thirteen miles long. One seldom hears mention of its name, except by the trout-fisher, it may be. It is treated, in general, as of small account. And yet, surely it is one of the most distinguished rivers of North Wales, for does it not drain the north-eastern side of Snowdon, and flow through the Pass of Llanberis, and broaden out into Llyn Peris and Llyn Padarn, and finally, after devious wanderings, and much merry tumbling among rocks, boulders, and little reedy islets, culminate in a port, with the great castle of Carnarvon guarding its exit into the Strait across which one looks to the lovely island of Anglesea? But if few speak of the Seiont, there has been unlimited eloquence concerning the grandeur--what the descriptive writers of the last century would have considered the awfulness--of the Llanberis Pass. The point of view has changed whilst the century has been passing away. Where our great-grandfathers spoke of "horrid scenes" we find nowadays glory of colour, and magnificence of form, and all the finer characteristics of mountain beauty. But something, after all, is to be said from the point of view of our great-grandfathers. We travel through the Pass of Llanberis by coach on good and safe roads, and they ventured, perforce, along "a horse-path so rugged that much of it was like going up and down rough stone stairs." It was between the two lakes Peris and Padarn, and at the new village of Llanberis, that the late Poet Laureate foregathered, in his youth, with his friend Leonard, who sang of "all the cycle of the golden year":-- "We crost Between the lakes, and clambered half-way up The counter side.... ... and high above, I heard them blast The steep slate quarry, and the great echo flap And buffet round the hill from bluff to bluff." The first recorded ascent of Snowdon seems to have been made from the same spot in 1639. "At daybreak on the 3rd of August," says the seventeenth-century mountaineer, "having mounted our horses, we proceeded to the British Alps." After the mountains, Dolbadarn Castle and Ceunant Mawr--the Waterfall of the Great Chasm--are the principal attractions of Llanberis. The cataract is upwards of 60 feet in height. It tumbles over a few ledges, rushes down a wide slope, and falls into a pool below. The castle is singularly well placed for picturesque effect. The one tower now remaining occupies the whole of the surface of a rocky eminence, which presents a precipitous front to the lake, and has a marvellous background of high-peaked mountains. Often enough it can be seen only through mists, or driving sheets of rain, for Llanberis seems to be the home of the rain-cloud and the cradle of the storm.