The air of Builth is supposed to be very salubrious, and for this reason many respectable families have chosen it for their residence. The abundance of game in its woods and hills, and of trout, salmon, and grayling in its streams is another inducement, and probably the _cause_ of the good health of its visitors. In this neighbourhood are mineral springs of three kinds,—saline, sulphurous, and chalybeate,—and a pump-room, frequently attended by a numerous company.
From a hill above the town is obtained a fine view of the Llynsyraddon, the largest lake in Wales except Bala. The country people believe that its bed was formerly the site of a city; and, as in Ireland, Brittany, and other places where a similar tradition prevails, they still see the towers of old “’neath the calm, cold wave reclining.” Giraldus calls the lake _Clamosam_, from the “terrible thundering noise it makes upon the breaking up of the ice in winter.”
The valley of the Wye is less wild after passing Builth, but more beautiful. After the fourth milestone, there is a magnificent specimen of a formation of the hills which may be said to be the grand peculiarity of this district. It consists of a massive range on the opposite bank, laid out in square terraces, such as Martin delights to heap on each other in his pictures. But here, where Nature is the builder, these masses of architecture are of rough, disjointed stones, hoary with age, and sometimes overgrown with moss and lichens. On the right bank where we stood, a small house is built just above the road, as if to enjoy the picture; and, a little further on, another of more aristocratic pretensions. A view, including a portion of the latter—the green, smooth-shaven pastures which answer for a lawn and extend to the water’s edge—the Wye foaming and brawling at the bottom, half hidden by trees of the deepest shadow—with the castellated mount beyond, and the sweep of the valley closed in by hills to the left—would form a whole, which Gilpin, with the dogmatism of art, might call “correctly picturesque.”
A little further on, we had an opportunity of inspecting these rocks more closely, which are only remarkable from the forms they assume. In the instance before us, they were two immense cubes of stone, as precise as if ruled by the square, and cut with the chisel. They stood exactly horizontal with the ground, and the upper was of smaller proportions than the lower. No other rock or even stone was near. At some distance another entirely insulated mass presented itself, as large as a cottage of two stories, with walls as perpendicular, and secluded like a cottage by trees.