If a grand and awe-inspiring finish to the Holyhead Road be sought, let the pilgrim, instead of making for the town, ascend the misty steeps of Holyhead Mountain, and make his rugged and circuitous way to the South Stack. The road runs past some peculiarly depressing outskirts, and by a long row of empty and forlorn cottages offered to be let at fourpence a week, and not finding tenants even at that modest sum. These desolate dwellings were built for the use of the men employed on the Holyhead Harbour Works, and have not been occupied since the Harbour was completed.

The South Stack, at the rocky edge of Holy Island, cannot be gained under four miles of wandering by winding roads across the heathery uplands: the way traced by whitewashed stones placed at intervals to mark the track in foggy weather. Long before the traveller gains the cliff’s edge, he will perhaps be suddenly overtaken by one of the sea fogs, and at last come to the place unawares. Then he may be grateful indeed for the strong breast-wall of masonry that saves the strayed visitor from walking over the precipices into the sea some five hundred feet below.

A sea-fog is a ghastly and chilling phenomenon, but in no other circumstances does the South Stack rock appear so impressive, or the fog-horn of its lighthouse seem so uncanny. As a light wind springs up and gradually clears away the fog, like clouds of white smoke, the first object looming in ghostly fashion out of the absolute void is the lighthouse lantern, apparently detached and swimming in air; while the strange bellowing, like that of a dyspeptic cow, that has been coming at half-minute intervals from some unknown quarter, is located from it. The distant wail, throbbing in a higher key across the invisible water, is the fog-horn on the Skerries.

As the fog gradually dies away, the lighthouse becomes revealed with the island rock it stands upon. This is the South Stack: a great mass of seamed and crannied rock torn off from the cliffs and standing as an island, itself rising to a height of 212 feet above high water, and looked down upon by sheer granite cliffs three hundred feet taller. In the narrow chasm below the sea dashes savagely in and out of the gloomy caverns, with a sound like muffled thunder. The grandeur and scale of this terrific scene—a fitting climax to all the varied scenery of the Holyhead Road—are not fully realised when looking down upon it. There, on the island rock, stands the white lighthouse, with whitewashed stone walls zigzagging along the verge of its cliffs, and forming a little compound where the store-houses and the cottages of the staff are situated; and the whole looks so neat and toy-like that its dimensions are not at first grasped. But when the slow and winding descent to it down the face of the cliff by 381 rude rocky steps has been cautiously accomplished, the awful savagery of the spot is realised. There may possibly be a few places on these coasts to approach the grimly bristling rocks of the South Stack in their wild beauty, but none can surpass them.

At the foot of the long descent, but still perched high above the fearful waves that even in calm weather run and recede, hissing and foaming, for a distance of thirty or forty feet up and down the face of the cliffs, is the entrance to a suspension-bridge hung from side to side of the channel. Before this was built, the only means of access was by a line and basket, followed at a little later period by a rope bridge; but the risk was so great that the present one, a miniature reproduction of the Menai Bridge was constructed.

Perhaps as remarkable a feature of this strange place as anything else to be seen is the vast concourse of sea-birds inhabiting the rocks—shags, penguins, guillemots, cormorants, sea-gulls, puffins, razor-bills, and even peregrine falcons, screaming and chattering loud enough to drown even the sound of the waves. The lighthouse-keepers and other observers tell how the gulls all migrate to other and warmer climes on or about every 12th of August, returning in a body about February 10th. The keepers state that in midst of the February night they are advised of the birds’ arrival by a great noise, as though it were a mutual greeting and cheering. These feathered inhabitants of the South Stack are under the protection of the Government, and are as useful to the Trinity House as any of the lighthouses, buoys, beacons, or fog-horns on the coast; their incredible numbers and deafening noise warning mariners just as effectually as any mechanical devices. As no sportsmen (so-called) are allowed to disturb the birds, they are wonderfully tame, and present an odd sight, row upon row of them perched upon the ledges like some vast and patient audience. The cliffs for long distances are populous with them, and one particularly noisy and turbulent place near the North Stack has acquired the name of the “Parliament House.”

Here, then, where the sea-birds scream and fly, on the rocky ramparts of this wild land, overlooking that broad belt of water known by choice either as St. George’s Channel or the Irish Sea, shall the Holyhead Road most fittingly end. From this outlook one may watch the great liners coming by, bound for America, or within an hour of ending their voyage at Liverpool, and may see the packets set forth or come in from Ireland. Whether Ireland itself, or that other Mona, known better by its modern name of the Isle of Man, can be seen, lying afar off, like cloudbanks upon the horizon, is a matter for the most favourable weather, the keenest eyesight, and the most robust faith to decide in the affirmative, or for scepticism to deny.