uns from the well.

The legend of St. Winifred is too long and ridiculous for a letter; I
leave you to Dr. Fleetwood (when Bishop of St. Asaph) for its
description. I will only tell you, in two words, that this St. Winifred
was a beautiful damsel that lived on the top of the hill; that a prince
of the country fell deeply in love with her; that coming one day when her
parents were abroad, and she resisting his passion, turned into rage, and
as she was flying from him cut off her head, which rolled down the hill
with her body, and at the place where it stopped gushed out this well of
water. But there was also a good hermit that lived at the bottom of the
hill, who immediately claps her head to her body, and by the force of the
water and his prayers she recovered, and lived to perform many miracles
for many years after. They give you her printed litanies at the well.
And I observed the Roman Catholics in their prayers, not with eyes lifted
up to heaven, but intent upon the water, as if it were the real blood of
St. Winifred that was to wash them clean from all their sins.

In every inn you meet with a priest, habited like country gentlemen, and
very good companions. At the "Cross Keys," where I lodged, there was one
that had been marked out to me, to whom I was particularly civil at
supper; but finding by my conversation I was none of them, he drank and
swore like a dragoon, on purpose, as I imagine, to disguise himself. From
Holywell in two hours I came to a handsome seat of Sir John Conway's at
Redland, and next day to Conway.

I do not know any place in Europe that would make a finer landscape in a
picture than Conway at a mile's distance. It lies on the side of a hill,
on the banks of an arm of the sea about the breadth of the Thames at
London, and within two little miles of the sea, over which we ferry to go
to the town.

The town is walled round, with thirty watch-towers at proper distances on
the walls; and the castle with its towers, being very white, makes an
august show at a distance, being surrounded with little hills on both
sides of the bay or river, covered with wood. But when you cross the
ferry and come into the town, there is nothing but poverty and misery.
The castle is a heap of rubbish uncovered, and these towers on the walls
only standing vestiges of what Wales was when they had a prince of their
own.

They speak all Welsh here, and if a stranger should lose his way in this
county of Carnar