The children and grown people stared lazily at me as I passed, but showed no such alert and vivacious curiosity as a community of Yankees would have done. I turned up a street that led me to the castle, which looked very picturesque close at hand, — more so than at a distance, because the towers and walls have not a sufficiently broken outline against the sky. There are several round towers at the angles of the wall very large in their circles, built of gray stone, crumbling, ivy-grown, everything that one thinks of in an old ruin. I could not get into the inner space of the castle without climbing over a fence, or clambering down into the moat; so I contented myself with walking round it, and viewing it from the outside. Through the gateway I saw a cow feeding on the green grass in the inner court of the castle. In one of the walls there was a large triangular gap, where perhaps the assailants had made a breach. Of course there were weeds on the ruinous top of the towers, and along the summit of the wall. This was the first castle built by Edward I. in Wales, and he resided here during the erection of Conway Castle, and here Queen Eleanor gave birth to a princess. Some few years since a meeting of Welsh bards was held within it.
After viewing it awhile, and listening to the babble of some children who lay on the grass near by, I resumed my walk, and, meeting a Welshman in the village street, I asked him my nearest way back to Rhyl. “Dim Sassenach,” said he, after a pause. How odd that an hour or two on the railway should have brought me amongst a people who speak no English! Just below the castle, there is an arched stone bridge over the river Clwyd, and the best view of the edifice is from hence. It stands on a gentle eminence, commanding the passage of the river, and two twin round towers rise close beside one another, whence, I suppose, archers have often drawn their bows against the wild Welshmen, on the river-banks. Behind was the line of mountains; and this was the point of defence between the hill country and the lowlands. On the bridge stood a good many idle Welshmen, leaning over the parapet, and looking at some small vessels that had come up the river from the sea. There was the frame of a new vessel on the stocks near by.
As I returned, on my way home, I again inquired my way of a man in breeches, who, I found, could speak English very well. He was kind, and took pains to direct me, giving me the choice of three ways, viz. the one by which I came, another across the fields, and a third by the embankment along the riverside. I chose the latter, and so followed the course of the Clwyd, which is very ugly, with a tidal flow and wide marshy banks. On its farther side was Rhyddlan marsh, where a battle was fought between the Welsh and Saxons a thousand years ago. I have forgotten to mention that the castle and its vicinity was the scene of the famous battle of the fiddlers, between De Blandeville, Earl of Chester, and the Welsh, about the time of the Conqueror.
CONWAY CASTLE.
September 13th. — On Monday we went with O’Sullivan to Conway by rail. Certainly this must be the most perfect specimen of a ruinous old castle in the whole world; it quite fills up one’s idea. We first walked round the exterior of the wall, at the base of which are hovels, with dirty children playing about them, and pigs rambling along, and squalid women visible in the doorways; but all these things melt into the picturesqueness of the scene, and do not harm it. The whole town of Conway is built in what was once the castle-yard, and the whole circuit of the wall is still standing in a delightful state of decay. At the angles, and at regular intervals, there are round towers, having half their circle on the outside of the walls, and half within. Most of these towers have a great crack pervading them irregularly from top to bottom; the ivy hangs upon them, — the weeds grow on the tops. Gateways, three or four of them, open through the walls, and streets proceed from them into the town. At some points, very old cottages or small houses are close against the sides, and, old as they are, they must have been built after the whole structure was a ruin. In one place I saw the sign of an alehouse painted on the gray stones of one of the old round towers. As we entered one of the gates, after making the entire circuit, we saw an omnibus coming down the street towards us, with its horn sounding. Llandudno was its place of destination; and, knowing no more about it than that it was four miles off, we took our seats. Llandudno is a watering-village at the base of the Great Orme’s Head, at the mouth of the Conway River. In this omnibus there were two pleasant-looking girls, who talked Welsh together, — a guttural, childish kind of a babble. Afterwards we got into conversation with them, and found them very agreeable. One of them was reading Tupper’s “Proverbial Philosophy.” On reaching Llandudno, S — — - waited at the hotel, while O’Sullivan, U — — , and I ascended the Great Orme’s Head. There are copper-mines here, and we heard of a large cave, with stalactites, but did not go so far as that. We found the old shaft of a mine, however, and threw stones down it, and counted twenty before we heard them strike the bottom. At the base of the Head, on the side opposite the village, we saw a small church with a broken roof, and horizontal gravestones of slate within the stone enclosure around it. The view from the hill was most beautiful, — a blue summer sea, with the distant trail of smoke from a steamer, and many snowy sails; in another direction the mountains, near and distant, some of them with clouds below their peaks.
We went to one of the mines which are still worked, and boys came running to meet us with specimens of the copper ore for sale. The miners were not now hoisting ore from the shaft, but were washing and selecting the valuable fragments from great heaps of crumbled stone and earth. All about this spot there are shafts and well-holes, looking fearfully deep and black, and without the slightest protection, so that we might just as easily have walked into them as not. Having examined these matters sufficiently, we descended the hill towards the village, meeting parties of visitors, mounted on donkeys, which is a much more sensible way of ascending in a hot day than to walk. On the sides and summit of the hill we found yellow gorse, — heath of two colors, I think, and very beautiful, — and here and there a harebell. Owing to the long-continued dry weather, the grass was getting withered and brown, though not so much so as on American hill-pastures at this season. Returning to the village, we all went into a confectioner’s shop, and made a good luncheon. The two prettiest young ladies whom I have seen in England came into the shop and ate cakes while we were there. They appeared to be living together in a lodging-house, and ordered some of their housekeeping articles from the confectioner.
Next we went into the village bazaar, — a sort of tent or open shop, full of knickknacks and gewgaws, and bought some playthings for the children. At half past one we took our seats in the omnibus, to return to Conway.
We had as yet only seen the castle wall and the exterior of the castle; now we were to see the inside. Right at the foot of it an old woman has her stand for the sale of lithographic views of Conway and other places; but these views are ridiculously inadequate, so that we did not buy any of them. The admittance into the castle is by a wooden door of modern construction, and the present seneschal is, I believe, the sexton of a church. He remembered me as having been there a month or two ago; and probably, considering that I was already initiated, or else because he had many other visitors, he left us to wander about the castle at will. It is altogether impossible to describe Conway Castle. Nothing ever can have been so perfect in its own style, and for its own purposes, when it was first built; and now nothing else can be so perfect as a picture of ivy-grown, peaceful ruin. The banqueting-hall, all open to the sky and with thick curtains of ivy tapestrying the walls, and grass and weeds growing on the arches that overpass it, is indescribably beautiful. The hearthstones of the great old fireplaces, all about the castle, seem to be favorite spots for weeds to grow. There are eight large round towers, and out of four of them, I think, rise smaller towers, ascending to a much greater height, and once containing winding staircases, all of which are now broken, and inaccessible from below, though, in at least one of the towers, the stairs seemed perfect, high aloft. It must have been the rudest violence that broke down these stairs; for each step was a thick and heavy slab of stone, built into the wall of the tower. There is no such thing as a roof in any part; towers, hall, kitchen, all are open to the sky. One round tower, directly overhanging the railway, is so shattered by the falling away of the lower part, that you can look quite up into it and through it, while sitting in the