s flesh. And at time less remote, when the crocodile was no
more, and though the woods still covered the hills, and wild cattle
strolled about, men were more numerous than before, and less unlike the
present race, I can easily conceive this lake to have been the haunt of
the afanc-beaver, that he here built cunningly his house of trees and
clay, and that to this lake the native would come with his net and his
spear to hunt the animal for his precious fur. Probably if the depths of
that pool were searched, relics of the crocodile and the beaver might be
found, along with other strange things connected with the periods in
which they respectively lived. Happy were I if for a brief space I could
become a Cingalese, that I might swim out far into that pool, dive down
into its deepest part, and endeavour to discover any strange things which
beneath its surface may lie.' Much in this guise rolled my thoughts as I
lay stretched on the margin of the lake."

In another place he tells a poor man that he believes in the sea-serpent,
and has a story of one seen in the very neighbourhood where he meets the
man. Immediately after the description of the lake there is a proof--one
of many--that he was writing straight from notes. Speaking of a rivulet,
he says: "It was crossed by two bridges, one immensely old and terribly
delapidated, the other old enough, but in better repair--_went and drank
under the oldest bridge of the two_." The book is large and strong
enough to stand many such infinitesimal blemishes.

Alongside of the sublime I will put what Borrow says he liked better. He
is standing on a bridge over the Ceiriog, just after visiting the house
of Huw Morus at Pont y Meibion:

"About a hundred yards distant was a small watermill, built over the
rivulet, the wheel going slowly, slowly round; large quantities of pigs,
the generality of them brindled, were either browsing on the banks, or
lying close to the sides, half immersed in the water; one immense white
hog, the monarch seemingly of the herd, was standing in the middle of the
current. Such was the scene which I saw from the bridge, a scene of
quiet rural life well suited to the brushes of two or three of the old
Dutch painters, or to those of men scarcely inferior to them in their own
style--Gainsborough, Moreland, and Crome. My mind for the last half-hour
had been in a highly-excited state; I had been repeating verses of old
Huw Morus, brought to my recollection