I did not exactly think so. I thought that in many respects they were fine specimens of humanity. “Every one of those wild fellows,” said I to myself, “is worth a dozen of the poor mean-spirited book-tramper I have lately been discoursing with.” In the afternoon I again passed over into Anglesey, but this time not by the bridge but by the ferry on the north-east of Bangor, intending to go to Beaumaris, about two or three miles distant: an excellent road, on the left side of which is a high bank fringed with dwarf oaks, and on the right the Menai strait, leads to it. Beaumaris is at present a watering-place. On one side of it, close upon the sea stands the ruins of an immense castle, once a Norman stronghold, but built on the site of a palace belonging to the ancient kings of North Wales, and a favourite residence of the celebrated Owain Gwynedd, the father of the yet more celebrated Madoc, the original discoverer of America. I proceeded at once to the castle, and clambering to the top of one of the turrets, looked upon Beaumaris Bay, and the noble rocky coast of the mainland to the south-east beyond it, the most remarkable object of which is the gigantic Penman Mawr, which interpreted is “the great head-stone,” the termination of a range of craggy hills descending from the Snowdon mountains. “What a bay!” said I, “for beauty it is superior to the far-famed one of Naples. A proper place for the keels to start from, which unguided by the compass found their way over the mighty and mysterious Western Ocean.” I repeated all the Bardic lines I could remember connected with Madoc’s expedition, and likewise many from the Madoc of Southey, not the least of Britain’s four great latter poets, decidedly her best prose writer, and probably the purest and most noble character to which she has ever given birth; and then, after a long, lingering look, descended from my altitude, and returned, not by the ferry, but by the suspension bridge to the mainland. CHAPTER XXVIII Robert Lleiaf—Prophetic Englyn—The Second Sight—Duncan Campbell—Nial’s Saga—Family of Nial—Gunnar—The Avenger. “Av i dir Môn, cr dwr Menai, Tros y traeth, ond aros trai.” “I will go to the land of Mona, notwithstanding the water of the Menai, across the sand, without waiting for the ebb.”