Welsh Journals

metallic echoes ringing through the crags when we cast a stone into it. A narrow white ribbon clinging dizzily to the slope of the mountain on the other side of the valley showed where the lonely road ran to secluded Dinas Mawddwy. To the west lay Bar- mouth and the sea, and the eye swept round from Cader Idris over the serried summits of myriad mountains to the Berwyn hills in the east. To the north lay the Arenig and the stony wastes of Traws- fynydd to the south that wilderness of barren peaks that surrounds Mawddwy, one of the wildest and most remote regions in the British Isles; unutterably barren, and craggy, and cheerless it seemed, viewed in that cold dawn-light, a fit home for those famed red brigands of old who found there a safe fastness to flee to after their lurid deeds of blood and rapine. Tradition has it that one of those red brigands had crossed over this Aran of ours, ascending as we had done, and descending the perpendicular eastern face by a perilous sheep-track, carrying on his back the carcase of a newly-slain bullock that he had raided, and he came and returned to Mawddwv in one night! But the glory of the panorama was in the distant scene. A low-lying fog had filled the distant valleys with a sea of mist, literally a sea of mist, for it was quite impossible to distinguish it from the sea to the west and Bala lake in the near distance, so silvery and level was its upper surface. Gradually, as we watched, the silvery inundation crept up the nearer valleys and blotted all below us from sight; and out of that gleaming sea the black mountain summits stood out islanded like some vast primeval archi- pelago when all the earth was void and covered with waters. And then came sunrise, and such a sunrise The one memorable sunrise of my recollection. I have always regarded that natural phenomenon as over- rated by the poets as compared with its twin, the sunset. Perhaps it is because I have seen immeasur- We congratulate our contributor, Mr. E. Roland Williams, on his success in winning the Prince Llewelyn Prize and Medal awarded by the University of Wales for the best thesis of the year on a Welsh subject. Mr. Williams's essay dealt with Welsh Seamen of the 16th and 17th Centuries." Another ably more sunsets than sunrises. such is the lot of the sluggard who shuns the bleakness of the dawn; sunsets reeking along the horizon in great blood splashes; gorgeously splendid Cardigan Bay sun- sets, just a great, dull red sun in an abyss of purple heaven and sea, casting a broad dazzling pathway of burnished copper athwart the purple sea pale sun- sets of watery gold making the far vista of a wooded cleft in the Glamorganshire hills seem the very portals of fairyland clear mellow orange sunsets of autumn shedding a strange peace over the hectic forest glade or even over the grimy buildings and jet black over- head wires of a great city. And I can recall one sun- rise to vie with them in splendour that I saw from the summit of the Aran. For to the east over the jagged horizon formed by the Berwyn hills, the steel grey of the sky brightened to blue, a blue that became greenish and primrose and daffodil and orange and rose. Little flotillas of cloud, rose and carnation and crimson, floated away and got lost in the vast skyey spaces; and then suddenly the great angry red rim of the sun pushed itself upwards slowly and majestically. Then came the grandest sight of all, the raising of the curtain as it were, upon a new day. It was a curtain of mist, a heavy, smoky purple veil and it ascended from the valley below and was rolled up into the great dome of the heavens where it was swallowed into the violet depths. For a full five minutes this sheet of mist was rolled upwards before us, sliding up parallel to the perpendicular face of the cliff and blotting the newly risen sun from view. At last it thinned into a delicate blue smoke and as the now dazzling sun was fluttering its. last vestiges in wreaths and whirls above the slopes, two weary and hungry but very satisfied mountaineers were slither- ing and sliding down through the rubble and slag of the western slopes towards the silver streak of a burn that tinkled faintly far below. E. R. W. WELSH SEAMEN Aberystwyth student, Mr. Norman K. Spoonley, has distinguished himself by taking First Class Honours in Colonial History. He was first attracted to the subject by Professor Stanley Robeits Exten- sion Lectures.