South Wales is so conveniently intersected with railways, that it is almost too easy for the tourist to pass from point to point. The preceding day, on a south-easterly slope of Plinlimmon, we had stood at the source of the Wye, and the desire possessed us to trace the progress of that river for awhile, to see if in its early meanderings it had the beauty which we knew so well to belong to it in its later and more familiar course. The excursion was not a disappointing one. It leads through some of the most primitive of Welsh districts: Builth, which in due time we reached, appeared quaint and attractive, and Talgarth, where our long walk was finished, might have tempted us, under other circumstances, to a longer stay, to explore the "Black Mountains," a wonderfully fine range of hills, girt with woods, pierced by lovely glens, and extending in ranges of lofty moorland for many miles.
A short railway journey now brought us to Brecon, so nobly placed in the midst of its mountain amphitheatre as to invite a longer stay: but we had to hurry on, anxious to reach the far-famed Vale of Neath. A very wild walk led upwards for many weary miles, as it seemed, from Brecon to Maen Llia, the "Llia Stone," near which is the source of the Llia, one of the streams whose confluence form the Neath. Descending rapidly, we soon came to the point where the Llia is joined from the north-east by the Dringarth, another confluent.
At Y-strad-fellte, a little further on, the glory of the mountain vale began to open out. We passed under the shadow of the crags to the east, as far as to the spot where, at a break in the rocky rampart, the Hepste, another tributary, hurries to meet the stream, forming a fine waterfall. At Crag-y-Dinas, a huge limestone rock, commanding from its summit both the upper glen and the lower valley as far as Swansea Bay, the beauty of the scene is at its height. Hardly any combination of scenery could be richer in its exquisite variety. The road now lay between these united streams and the Neath proper, which soon is joined from the western side by the Pyrrdin, up whose rocky glen we turned for the sake of its two charming cascades, the "Lady's" and the "Crooked" Fall.