The Llugwy dreams along through pleasant meadows and by quiet woods before it comes to the famous Rhaiadr-y-Wennol (the Waterfall of the Swallow). Whence, one is driven to ask, comes such a name as this? The easy and the usual reply is that these are called Swallow Falls because of the swiftness with which the water descends. But all waterfalls are swift. The correct answer to the question suggests itself, as one continues to gaze, through a mist of fine spray, when the river comes down in an autumn flood. The ears deafened by the rush of the cataract, the eyes dazzled and fascinated by the breadth and the mass of the falling waters, a dim sense of something white, with black streaks here and there, overpowers all other impressions. As the river sweeps downward over the higher fall, it is broken and divided by dark pillars of rock. Yes, that is the idea, certainly. What these Falls suggested to the ancient inhabitants of Wales, to those who gave its name to the Rhaiadr-y-Wennol, was the swift alternation between the white gleam of the swallow's breast and the dark shadow of its wings, as it darted to and fro between river and sky. George Borrow has a concise, vivid, and fairly correct description of the Falls, which may be quoted here because it is impossible to put the matter in fewer words. "First," he says, "there are a number of little foaming torrents, bursting through rocks about twenty yards above the promontory on which I stood; then come two beautiful rolls of white water, dashing into a pool a little above the promontory; then there is a swirl of water round its corner into a pool below, black as death, and seemingly of great depth; then a rush through a very narrow outlet into another pool, from which the water clamours away down the glen." [Illustration: MINERS' BRIDGE, BETTWS-Y-COED (_p. 212_).]