From the balcony outside our rooms upstairs there was a spacious and comprehensive view of the surrounding scenery. In front of us lay a broad basin enclosed in a broken circuit of rising ground and with the yellow sands and foaming bar of the issuing river in the middle distance. The opposite extremity of this half-enclosed sheet of water ended in a projecting rocky headland dotted with white-washed farmhouses and cottages, and barring the farther view of the coast-line to southward. Nearer at hand and adjacent to the inn there jutted forth the northern horn of the little bay, backed by the craggy islet of Ynys Ilar formed like a couched lion with his visage set towards the sinking sun. The rocky shores had assumed everywhere a purple-black tint against the pale blue of sea and sky, whilst inland the bleak unfertile soil showed brown and bare in the walled fields now denuded of their crops of oats and barley. I would not deny a certain inherent charm to the quiet scenery of Glanymôr, and possibly some landscape painter of an unambitious type might have felt tempted to portray its sober tints and restful contours; but I myself experienced a sense of disappointment in what I deemed its negative character. Here was no savage majesty of nature; no sweep of limitless ocean; no thundering breakers on a boundless strand; no gloomy groves descending to the shore; no groups of gnarled and distorted pines that were eloquent of furious gales. And yet the features and general aspect of the place somehow imbued me with regretful thoughts of Tamarida, its haven and its twin promontories. For the first time a craving for my lost palace struck at my heart, as I gazed upon the encircling sweep of land and sea and sky. It may have been my fancy, but I thought I perceived a shadowy vision of that aerial city hover for a second like a mirage in the greyness of the dull horizon.