The two miles leading from Bettws along the Holyhead Road to Rhaiadr-y-Wennol, or the “Swallow Falls,” conduct upwards, out of the hole in whose kindly shelter Bettws lies. Along this somewhat tiring incline a long procession of sight-seers may be seen toiling every day, from April to October, at any time between eight a.m. and seven in the evening, for the Falls have always been considered one of the sights best worth seeing in Wales, and even the Holyhead Mail used to pull up for five minutes to allow passengers to see them. They obtain their pretty name only, it is sad to reflect, by error, in an old confusion of “Wennol,” the Welsh word for “swallow,” with “Ewynol,” which means “foaming,” and is therefore a description merely Saxon in its unimaginative matter-of-fact. To those who would compare the Swallow Falls with Niagara or Alpine waterfalls, with intent to disparage this beautiful spot, we need have nothing to say. Let it be sufficient that these foaming waters, overhung with rocks and fantastically-rooted trees, are sufficiently lovely. The Falls are so close to the road as to be readily seen from it, between the trunks of the little fir plantation that intervenes, while their roaring can be heard far away. They begin with a tumbled race of the Llugwy between scattered rocks, developing into three distinct steps or falls, followed by a long slide. These masses of water, flung riotously upon one another, produce a curiously beautiful effect on the river immediately below, the element being so thoroughly aerated that for many yards onward it is full of air-bubbles as brilliant as the sparklets in champagne or mineral waters. The Swallow Falls have, of course, their legend. Beneath them is supposed to lie the spirit of Sir John Wynn, of Gwydyr, a canny baronet of the early seventeenth century, who was so “shrewd and successful in his dealings” that his Welsh neighbours, rightly or wrongly, thought him enriched by foul means at their expense. Accordingly, here his unhappy shade was sent “to be punished, purged, spouted upon, and purified from the foul deeds done in his days of nature.” According to latest advices, it is here yet, “damned moist, unpleasant.” If all erring shades were banished to such situations, it is to be feared there would not be waterfalls sufficient to go round; but, indeed, it is to a roomier and a drier place that they are generally thought to be consigned.

The Llugwy, more and more a mountain stream as we proceed, borders the road, on one side or the other, as far as Capel Curig. Half a mile beyond the Swallow Falls, it is crossed at Ty-Hyll bridge, and is thenceforward on the left-hand. The road still ascends, crosses a wild tract with an ancient fir-crowned tumulus, and comes steeply up to Pont-y-Cyfyng and the Cyfyng Falls, a pretty scene, among scrub oaks and silver birches, with one of Telford’s happily placed little alcoves, for the amateurs of the picturesque, built out from the breastwork protecting the road.

Here the great road enters upon its wildest and most impressive stretches, but not without such compensations to the traveller as the pretty, artist-haunted inns of Tan-y-Bwlch afford. Another toll-gate—never, surely, was there a great highway to vie with this in the number of them—blocked the way until the close of 1890, and the old house remains. Just beyond it, and full in view of the trim peaks of Snowdon, of Moel Siabod, and their great cloud-capped brethren, is the little village, or rather hamlet, of Capel Curig, lying in the valley where roads go off left to the stormy pass of Llanberis and so on to Carnarvon; and on the right to Holyhead. Capel Curig was, like Bettws, never more than a chapelry in the wilds; but, unlike Bettws, it has not grown with modern times. One may seek the reason with success in the fact that no railway comes near it. A contributory reason is perhaps found in the nature of its surroundings. Grandeur of scenery, and purity of air do not compensate holiday-folks for the mists, the furious storms, and the frequent rains that haunt the spot. Visitors to Capel Curig have been known to drive into it through the rain, to stay as indoor prisoners to stress of weather for a week; departing without ever once having seen the mists disperse that cling so fondly about Snowdon, and veil his majesty from many eyes.

A thunderstorm here is a terrific and appalling thing, with the encircling mountains acting as sounding-boards to the demoniacal peals of thunder that crash with ear-rending reverberations along the valleys. Fortunately for those who are unwilling witnesses of this elemental strife, Capel Curig possesses a very large and resourceful hotel, standing off the Holyhead Road, by the twin lakes in the valley. It was built about 1802 by the then Lord Penrhyn, one of the first to urge the improvement of the Holyhead Road and the adoption of this route, instead of the older and more circuitous one by Chester. He probably could not, with the best will in the world, have erected a plainer building.

When Borrow, tramping eighteen miles on a hot and dusty day, came here, he found the fashionable company in the grand saloon surveying him with looks of the most supercilious disdain. They thought him some poor fellow, tramping from motives of economy.

The poor little whitewashed church of Capel Curig—the original Chapel of St. Curig that gives the place its name—stands quite near the big hotel. It was dedicated to Curig and to Julitta, his mother. The missionary zeal that impelled them to come here, a thousand years or so ago, must have been at fever heat, for this was then a place of unutterable loneliness: not as now with a fine road running by, but a trackless country, deeply shadowed by the almost impenetrable oak woods that covered the mountain sides and the moorlands, now almost entirely innocent of trees of any sort. A mild specimen of what even eighteenth century roads were like will give some notion of the difficulties of approach that remained until 1820. This “awful example” is the four-mile length of deserted road between Capel Curig and Llyn Ogwen. It was once the only way, and the modern Holyhead Road between these two points is wholly of Telford’s making. The beginning of this track—for it was little better—may be sought between the Post Office and the whitewashed cottage that was once the “Tap” of the hotel down yonder. Passing immediately over a rugged bridge spanning a waterfall on the Llugwy, it mounts across the rising moorland, and climbs a boulder-strewn ridge; to descend to the shores of Ogwen under the beetling crags of Trifaen mountain. There is sufficient evidence that it is little less than the bed of a mountain torrent in winter-time, and even to pedestrians the exploration of it is difficult.