ace in history. Ascending a hill to the northward, a view is
obtained over the valleys of the three picturesque streams--the Dore,
Dulas, and Monnow--that afterwards unite their waters; and, proceeding
up the Dore, we come to the village of Abbey Dore, with the roofless
ruins of its abbey, a part of which is utilized for the parish church,
though scarcely anything is now left beyond fragments of the conventual
buildings. This was a Cistercian monastery founded by Robert of Ewias in
the reign of Henry I. We are now in the heart of the Golden Valley,
which seems to be excavated out of a plateau with long, terrace-like
hills bounding it on either hand, their lower parts rich in verdure,
while their summits are dark and generally bare. Every available part of
the lower surface is thoroughly cultivated, its hedgerows and copses
giving variety to the scene. As we move up the valley the Scyrrid Vawr
raises its notched and pointed summit like a peak dropped down upon the
lowlands. This mountain, nearly fifteen hundred feet high, whose name
means the "Great Fissure," is severed into an upper and lower summit by
a deep cleft due to a landslip. It is also known as the Holy Mountain,
and in its day has been the goal of many pilgrims. St. Michael, the
guardian of the hills, has a chapel there, where crowds resorted on the
eve of his festival. It used to be the custom for the Welsh farmers to
send for sackloads of earth out of the cleft in this Holy Mountain,
which they sprinkled over their houses and farm-buildings to avoid evil.
They were also especially careful to strew portions over the coffins and
graves of the dead. At the village of Wormridge, where some members of
the Clive family are buried, there is a grand old elm on the
village-green around which the people used to assemble for wrestling and
for the performance of other rural amusements. At the base of this tree
stood the stocks, that dungeon "all of wood" to which it is said there
was

"----neither iron bar nor gate,
Portcullis, chain, nor bolt, nor grate,
And yet men durance there abide
In dungeon scarce three inches wide."

This famous valley also contains the pretty church and scanty ruins of
the castle of Kilpeck; also the church of St. Peter at Rowlstone, where
the ornamental representations of cocks and apostolic figures all have
their heads downward, in memory of the position in which St. Peter was
crucified. Here also, on the edge of the Black Mountains