of Carnarvon, is in great ruin and decay, whereof the greater part hath been downe and uninhabitable for manie ages past; the rest of the timber supporting the roof is all, or for the most part, rotten, and growth daylie by wet more and more in decay, no man having dwelt in anie part thereof these thirty years past." There is no roof at all now; the timbers are long consumed; the castle is gutted throughout; and yet, as seen from the Conway river, the castle still has a certain august and complete majesty, as if time could do it no real despite. [Illustration: _Photo: I. Slater, Llandudno._ THE CONWAY, FROM CONWAY CASTLE.] Conway Castle, with the Conway mountain, on which there is a British fort, towering up in the rear, held complete command of the estuary. It was an English, not a Welsh, stronghold, being built by Edward I., about 1284. Queen Eleanor is said to have lived there with the king, and one of the towers has been named the "Queen's" tower in memory of that event. The great hall, which was supported on vaults, was 130 feet long by 32 feet broad. The castle was besieged in 1290 by Madoc, one of the sons of Llewelyn, the English king himself being present on the occasion. A fleet bringing provisions saved the garrison just as it was being starved into surrender. When Bolingbroke landed in England, and Richard II. found himself abandoned by his army, he fled here for safety, and at this castle, it is averred, was his abdication signed. Conway town, sloping swiftly down to the riverside, and almost wholly enclosed within its many-towered walls, looks like a contemporary illustration of Froissart. There is no other such perfect specimen of a small mediæval walled town now remaining. The fortifications climb up a steep hillside, in a triangular form--or rather, as has been said, so as to make the figure of a Welsh harp. The highest point of the triangle is so far above the other portions of the walls that the whole has that quaint look of being out of perspective which is the most pronounced characteristic of all mediæval draughtsmanship. [Illustration: CONWAY CASTLE.] Across the water, and on the way to Llandudno, the little town, or village, or city of Deganwy half hides itself among the sands, just above the verge of what was formerly, and even up to recent times, a marsh stretching from opposite Conway to Llandudno Bay. It was hereabout, but on the Conway side of the river, that the pearl-fishing was carried on:-- "Conway, which out of his streame doth send Plenty of pearls to deck his dames withal"--