Welsh Journals

cottages of the village, and built round three sides of a narrow courtyard. Hens pecked there then, and fishing nets were hung out to dry, and several families inhabited one wing of the bleak, dilap- idated building. Beyond the village a fragment of wall juts out on one of the rocks. That, and some foundations under the water, are all that is left either of the pier begun in the reign of George I, or of Mr. Madocks' new pier or break- water which so quickly fell into ruin. I still think that I was right then in believing that Porthdinllaen is quite unlike any other place in North Wales. For one thing, there is no such long line of sand-cliffs anywhere else along that rocky coast. Above them stretches the flat table- land of Nevin and Morfa Nevin and beyond rise here and there the lonely peaks of Lleyn. (About a hundred years ago some of the strangers who then used to arrive here quite often, by sea or by post-chaise, with instruments and note books, and survey the whole place very carefully, had decided that the height of those cliffs, some 80 to 100 feet above sea level, would make it very difficult to bring a railway down to the pier.) This level line of cliff breaks at the neck of iPorthdinllaen headland, where traces of an old "dinas" can still be seen. Early 19th century writers believed that it was the remains of a Roman camp, and spoke of the vestiges of strong entrenchments below it. The sea has played strange tricks with the rocks that guard the exposed western side of the headland, wearing them into serrated ridges, hollowing out creeks and coves, and in one place burrowing an underground passage some thirty or forty yards inland into a fissure at the bottom of a curious cavity. On those savage rocks the spray may be tossing high when hardly a ripple breaks on the sand below the sheltered little fishing village. Storm and calm are often brought sur- prisingly close together; for the headland, perhaps half a mile long, is here little more than 200 yards across. The houses of Porthdinllaen also have one characteristic all their own. Owing to their posi- tion, wedged between the cliffs and the sea, they are raised above high water mark on platforms and buttresses of stone, hung with a fringe of yellow seaweed that is lifted by the rising tide. In those days each tide brought to a child the ex- citement of watching and waiting to see whether it would rise a little higher than the last, a little nearer to the very doors of the houses. I can remember some storms there, but cer- tainly I never saw any of the several hundred "large merchantmen" which were said to have put in to the roadstead every year. No one in the/place owned anything larger than a small fish- ing smack. But people still talked then of the time when ships were built at Porthdinllaen, the hulls taking shape on the stocks and the masts rising within a few yards of the cottages where the men who were to sail them lived. They built a three-masted brig on the shore by the Bwlch, where the road ends. One Porthdinllaen vessel was wrecked with all hands on a return voyage, bringing back a cargo, which sounds as if it had come out of a nursery rhyme, of apples, arrowroot, and sugar candy. In those days, and for long after, Mrs. Jones of the Ty Coch Inn was reigning as harbour master; and it is supposed that she is the only woman in the kingdom to hold that office. (She holds it even now-in 1933-and at the age of 97 does not find the duties too heavy, because there are no longer any dues to collect.) The events which might have transformed the place had passed over the heads of the inhabitants, leav- ing behind only very vague legends of a livelier past. The "Whitehall" had always stood there, with one foot in the sea, buttressed against the tides, partly inhabited and partly derelict. No one troubled to ask why it had been built there, and by whom. Part of it had really been an inn not so long before. Next to it is the Ty Coch Inn, with its front of old red brick-unusual in North Wales-tiny dormer windows, and white- washed sea wall. There was yet another inn, just round the corner by the little wharf where a coast- ing steamer used to put in every week with coal and other goods for distribution to all the village shops of the neighbourhood. They said then that contraband whisky was still sold there. (The coast round Porthdinllaen had been a great place for smuggling in the old days). Three inns seem a liberal allowance for a hamlet made up of less than ten houses altogether, besides the "White- hall"; and there had been yet another, further along the shore, at the Bwlch. Only the Ty Coch has a license now. The "Whitehall," which through disuse was fast attaining an appearance of age, was then by far the newest building in the place. The others had all the charm of old fashioned Welsh cottages, standing out cleanly, with whitewashed walls and big chimneys, against the darker background of the cliff. But like Rip van Winkle, the place had fallen asleep many years ago, and hardly stirred in its sleep. An old woman sitting in a doorway, one or two fishermen mending their nets or caulk- ing their boat-these were the only signs of life. It is odd that I can never remember seeing any children playing about there. Porthdinllaen belongs to the old. It was only at nightfall, when lights shone out of the little windows, that the hamlet seemed to become larger and more popul- ous. So, from the cottage where we lodged, I saw them shine out every evening, when the head- land stood black above them against the last light in the west.