ere. I was there on a
market-day, and was particularly pleased to see the Welsh ladies come to
market in their laced hats, their own hair hanging round their shoulders,
and blue and scarlet cloaks like our Amazons--some of them with a
greyhound in a string in their hands.

Whitchurch, near it, hath a fine church, built by the Earl of Bridgwater;
and so to Chester, an ancient and large city, with a commanding castle.
The city consists of four large streets, which make an exact cross, with
the town-house and Exchange in the middle; but you don't walk the streets
here, but in galleries up one pair of stairs, which keeps you from the
rain in winter, and sun in summer; and the houses and shops, with
gardens, go all off these galleries, which they call rows. The city is
walled round, and the wall so firmly paved that it gives you an agreeable
prospect of the country and river, as you walk upon it. The churches are
very neat, and the cathedral an august old pile; there is an ancient
monument of an Emperor of Germany, with assemblies every week. While I
continued at Chester, I made an excursion into North Wales, and went into
Denbigh, the capital of that country, where are the remains of a very
great and old castle, as is also at Flint, the capital of Flintshire.
These castles were the frontier garrisons of Wales before it came under
the subjection of England. The country is mountainous, and full of iron
and lead works; and here they begin to differ from the English both in
language and dress.

From Flint, along the seaside, in three hours I arrived at the famous
cold bath called St. Winifred's Well; and the town from thence called
Holywell is a pretty large well-built village, in the middle of a grove,
in a bottom between, two hills. The well is in the foot of one of the
hills, and spouts out about the bigness of a barrel at once, with such
force that it turns three or four mills before it falls into the sea. The
well where you bathe is floored with stone surrounded with pillars, on
which stands a neat little chapel dedicated to St. Winifred, but now
turned into a Protestant school. However, to supply the loss of this
chapel, the Roman Catholics have chapels erected almost in every inn for
the devotion of the pilgrims that flock hither from all the Popish parts
of England. The water, you may imagine, is very cold, coming from the
bowels of an iron mountain, and never having met with the influence of
the sun till it r