The group of the Breiddens is gradually left behind, then rises the steep mass of Pontesbury Hill, backed by the long ridge of the Stiper Stones, with their broken crests of rugged and hard white rock, and behind them the broad backs of the Longmynds or the distant pyramid of Corndon. But, of course, to enjoy to perfection views of the land which feeds the upper waters of the Severn, it is necessary to quit the valley and obtain a Pisgah sight from some commanding hill. Thence we look over mile after mile of lowland, woodland, cornfield, and pasture, undulating downwards from bare rough hillsides on which the copses often are thickly clinging, to the margins of brooks and to the bed of the main river. To the west, line after line of hills recedes more dimly into the distance, till at last one shadow is pointed out as Plinlimmon, and another, yet fainter, as Cader Idris, and sometimes an apex of a far-off pyramid is said to be Snowdon. South of us, and yet more to the east, lie the nearer masses already mentioned, while in these directions the eye may detect, from some points of view, the peaked summits of the Caradoc Hills, or may rest upon the huge hog's back of the Wrekin as it rises abruptly from the Shropshire lowland. There are few prettier districts in our country than the borderland between England and Wales; and that part of which we now speak can hold its own with most others. Here and there, perhaps, the hills are a little bare, and we seldom find much boldness of outline. In the Shelve district also, the lead mines with their white spoil-banks are distinctly an offence to the eye; but the wooded glens are often singularly beautiful, and the outlook from the heath-covered moorlands gives a sense of breadth and freedom, like the open sea. As it nears Shrewsbury, the Severn quits for a time the hill-country, though it is only near the waterside that the land is distinctly a plain. The town itself is at the edge of a low plateau, and some of its streets are fairly steep, though the ascents are not long. The situation is fine, and in former days, when the town was restricted to narrower limits, must have been much more striking than it is at present. The river bends in sharp curves, like a reversed S, as though the hills had made a final struggle to hold it in bondage. Of these loops, that on the eastern side is the larger; and it forms a kind of horseshoe, almost enclosing a hilly headland of moderate elevation, which shelves down towards the neck of the isthmus, but falls steeply, sometimes almost precipitously, towards the river brink. Thus, with the Severn for a moat on more than three sides, and a comparatively narrow and defensible approach on the fourth, the position is almost a natural stronghold, and it was selected at a comparatively early date as the site of a fortified town.