A Short History of Wales

a, or if you cross the Severn or the Dee from the east, you will see that Wales is a country all by itself. It rises grandly and proudly. If

what it is like now; the historian will tell you what its people have done an

very oldest and hardest rock-granite, porphyry, and basalt; and these rocks are given their form by fire. But the greater part of the country is made of rocks formed by water-still the oldest of their kind. In the north-wes

rushing rivers. They are also its chief wealth-granite, slate, limestone, coal; an

becomes one degree cooler. At about 1,000 feet it becomes too cold for wheat; at about 1,500 it becomes too cold for corn; at about 2,0

nd the Severn, and in the deep valleys of the rivers which pierce far inland,-the Severn, Wye, Usk, Towy, Teivy, Dovey, Conway, and Clwyd. The pasture land, the land of small mountain farms, forms the middle th

the north-west, the isle of Anglesey lies. The peninsula of Lleyn, with a central ridge of rock, and slopes of pasture lands, runs to the south-west. To the ea

ly. From a peak among these-Cader Vronwen (2,573 feet), or the Aran (2,970 feet), or Cader I

e see the high moorlands of central Wales, sloping to Cardigan Bay on the we

(2,910 feet) beyond the Usk. West of these the hills fade away into the broad peninsula of Dy

drunken Seithenyn, and of the bells of Aberdovey. But the sea is a kind neighbour. Its soft, warm winds bathe the hills with life; and the great sweep of the big Atlantic waves into the river mouths help our commerce. H