Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

with the pocket sextant at one or both ends, where one of these could not be seen from the other. As the whole plan was too large to be taken into the field, traces were made of portions about half a mile square, which were mounted on stiff paper or linen, and folded up in a loose cover for easy reference. In this way a whole parish of several thousand acres could be examined and corrected in a week or two, especially in a country like Wales, where from a few elevated points, large tracts could be distinctly seen spread out below, and any differences from the old map be easily detected.' Our youthful surveyor remarked that he liked this work, as he was partial to a certain amount of solitude. Also, that he was fond of rambling over countryside which was new to him. New Radnor, although once a town of some importance was, according to Wallace, a mere village and a poor one', its place as the county town having long since been yielded to Presteign. It is obvious that natural features always made a deep impression on him, and that even at so early an age, he never missed a chance of exploring any object of natural beauty. Hence his quite vivid description of what he refers to as, a rather celebrated waterfall called Water-break-its-Neck.' Unfortun- ately, the stream was not in spate that day, but he concludes that this fall must have been a particularly fine one when the stream was full- as it probably then shoots out clear of the rock The inn at which he stayed at New Radnor was very quiet and comfortable. The landlord and his wife he describes as refined looking people' and adds not the least like the ordinary type of innkeepers There follows an anecdote very much in the tradition of George Borrow. The young surveyor's fellow guest was an exciseman, and Wallace writes that despite his calling, this official was not treated as an enemy by the people of the locality, but rather as a confidential friend. The exciseman was brisk and intelligent'. Wallace remembered him because he told the tale of Heloise and Abelard, giving particular feeling to this famous love epic by the sympathetic intoning of passages from the lovers' correspondence. It may be that the exciseman had recited this story often, as it seems that he was able to give much of the narrative, exactly as it had been printed. This was the first, and indeed only time that Wallace heard a literary item of the kind presented spontaneously in a country inn. At Rhayader, where he assisted his brother in a survey early in 1840, he recalls a young Carmarthenshire man who was noted for the coarseness of his language. Although this is related with obvious censure and dis- approval, the same young man also becomes something of a hero for rescuing Wallace from a bog into which he had fallen, and by the same act, possibly saving his life. At Llanbister he met another young man with a vice, but one of quite another kind. Wallace's account reads- (He) was, I think, a Welshman, and a pleasant and tolerably respectable young man, but he had one dreadful habit-excessive smoking From smoking to strong drink. Here also a youthful experience is pressed into service to preach the virtue of temperance. At Rhayader, he was one of three who dined at the inn, and the youngest of the trio. The senior was the local medical man, John Henry Heaton. Bottles were ordered, but certainly not at the suggestion of Alfred, who was but a