von, it is ten to one if he meets with any one that has
English enough to set him right. The people are also naturally very
surly, and even if they understand English, if you ask them a question
their answer is, "Dame Salsenach," or "I cannot speak Saxon or English."
Their Bibles and prayer-books are all printed in Welsh in our character;
so that an Englishman can read their language, although he doth not
understand a word of it. It hath a great resemblance of the Bas-Bretons,
but they retain the letter and character as well as language, as the
Scots and Highlanders do.

They retain several Popish customs in North Wales, for on Sunday (after
morning service) the whole parish go to football till the afternoon
service begins, and then they go to the ale-house and play at all manner
of games (which ale-house is often kept by the parson, for their livings
are very small).

They have also offerings at funerals, which is one of the greatest
perquisites the parson hath. When the body is deposited in the church
during the service for the dead, every person invited to the burial lays
a piece of money upon the altar to defray the dead person's charges to
the other world, which, after the ceremony is over, the parson puts in
his pocket. From Conway, through the mountainous country of Carnarvon, I
passed the famous mountain of Penmaen-Mawr, so dreadfully related by
passengers travelling to Ireland. It is a road cut out of the side of
the rock, seven feet wide; the sea lies perpendicularly down, about forty
fathoms on one side, and the mountain is about the same height above it
on the other side. It looks dismal, but not at all dangerous, for there
is now a wall breast-high along the precipice. However, there is an ale-
house at the bottom of the hill on the other side, with this inscription,
"Now your fright is over, take a dram." From hence I proceeded to a
little town called Bangor, where there is a cathedral such as may be
expected in Wales; and from thence to Carnarvon, the capital of the
county. Here are the vestiges of a large old castle, where one of the
Henrys, King of England, was born; as was another at Monmouth, in South
Wales. For the Welsh were so hard to be reconciled to their union with
England at first, it was thought policy to send our queens to lie-in
there, to make our princes Welshmen born, and that way ingratiate the
inhabitants to their subjection to a prince born in their own country.
And for that