Welsh Journals

Awkward stretches of water had to be crossed. There was the Traeth Mawr, now embanked and crossed by road and rail, but before 1811 a waste of tidal water, so that, at low tide, travellers had to pick their way over the sands, with or without a hired guide. In March, 1750, Wesley set out from Tanybwlch at five in the morning, and came to the sands at six the tide was in, and I could not pass so I sat down in a little cottage for three or four hours this, by the way, was the day after those squalls of wind and torrents of rain. What did he do in that little cottage ? — in which you or I would have fretted and fumed literally fumed,' I expect, fortified by Dr. Johnson s praise of smoking as a thing which requires so little exertion, and yet preserves the mind from total vacuity Wesley, however, just sat down and translated Aldrich's Logic from the Latin, to serve as a text-book for the boys of his school at Kingswood. One does not quite know whether one ought rather to belaud Wesley's imperturbable industry or to pity the luckless boys for whom this grisly text-book was destined. Leaving Traeth Mawr, the next watery obstacle is Moel-y-don, of which we have already heard. And there is yet a third when we get within hail of Holyhead, we shall not find the embankment on which Telford's road will cross the neck of water between the mainland and Holy Island. If we wish to avoid fetching a long compass round, over Pont-rhypont, we must cross the little strait over what the Traveller's Pocket-book (i.e. Ogilby's 1675 road-maps) calls Rocks & Sands when the Tide is out." You usually hired a boy guide. In 1747, Wesley forgot to do this, and had to fumble his own way across; this little triumph seems to have heartened him, for in 1749, when for the third time he crossed without a guide, he contemptuously comments what need of them ?" Getting to Holyhead was one thing, getting thence to Ireland quite another. To cross from Dublin to Holyhead, in 1747, took Wesley from eleven at night till two in the afternoon of the next day. He got to Holyhead in 1748 to find that all the ships were on the other side," and he had to wait, nearly a fortnight, for a ship. So again in 1749 all the ships were on the Irish side." One came into Holyhead, but could not go out against the wind it was two days before she managed to set out and the next words are at sea, rolling." In 1750, as we have already heard, the ship, with saintly John Wesley and drunken William Griffith on board, had to put back and land her passengers, and the ill-assorted pair had to spend another week in Holyhead. In 1756, again, the packet started, but had to turn back "-this was on a Thursday,