Next day I went by Hafod and Spitty Ystwith over a bleak moorland country to the valley of the Teivi, and turned reverently aside to the celebrated monastery of Strata Florida, where is buried Dafydd ab Gwilym, the greatest genius of the Cymbric race. In this neighbourhood I heard a great deal of the exploits of Twm Shone Catti, the famous Welsh robber, who became a country gentleman and a justice of the peace.
From Tregaron, eight miles beyond Strata Florida, I went on to Llan Ddewi Brefi and Lampeter, and crossed over to Llandovery in the fair valley of the Towy. From there I went over the Black Mountains, in mist and growing darkness, to Gutter Vawr, and thence to Swansea. Through a country blackened with industry, I walked to Neath; thence in rainy weather to Merthyr Tydvil, where I went to see the Cyfartha Fawr Ironworks. Here I saw enormous furnaces and heard all kinds of dreadful sounds.
From Merthyr Tydvil I journeyed to Caerfili by Pen-y-Glas; then to Newport; then by Caer Went, once an important Roman station and now a poor, desolate place, to Chepstow. I went to the Wye and drank of the waters at its mouth, even as some time before I had drunk of the waters at its source. Returning to the inn, I got my dinner, and placing my feet against the sides of the grate I drank wine and sang Welsh songs till ten o'clock. Then, shouldering my satchel, I proceeded to the railroad station and took a first-class ticket to London.
In 1835 George Henry Borrow, fresh from a journey in Russia as the Bible Society's agent, set out for Spain to sell and distribute Bibles on the Society's behalf. This mission, in the most fervidly Roman Catholic of all European countries, was one that required rare courage and resourcefulness; and Borrow's task was complicated by the fact that Spain was in a disturbed state owing to the Carlist insurrection. Borrow's journeys in Spain, which were preceded by a tour in Portugal, and followed by a visit to Morocco, lasted in all about four years. In December, 1842, he published "The Bible in Spain"--a work less remarkable as a record of missionary effort than as a vivid narrative of picturesque travel episodes, and a testimony to its author's keen delight in an adventurous life of wanderings in the open air.