A short History of the Lowland Hundred inundated by the Sea.

The unrivalled hundred, the fertile plain, the pleasant populous district, with its gay celebrated city, sunk to the fathomless caverns of the deep. Mansua, matchless for its strength, its extent, and its antiquity, was the principal city, in this once populous region. The crystal river that meandered through the plain, saw Mansua's magnificent structures shadowing its banks, and extending from Harlech on the one hand, to Crickbeth on the other. What floating mirror ever reflected more beauteous mansions? Were not the two extensive towns on the confines of Patrick's miraculous causeway, like spacious kingdoms, for the number of their buildings, and the multitude of their inhabitants? And was the third town, that seemed to rise from the main, at Rûgs*

in narrating historical events. While other nations in their early Poetry, called in the aid of Giants, Fairies, and other extravagant fictions, the authentic record of reality was ever the favourite of the Cambrian Muse; therefore, greater faith may be given to the Poem here quoted.

* This word is pronounced Reegs, the Welsh u being sounded like the English ee.

Rocks, at the junction of the four streams, inferior to them in rank, or the fascination of its streams? Mansua, thy commerce exceeded the traffic of any two of these once celebrated and frequented market towns! How is the remote antiquity of thy history lost in oblivion? Was it the weight of thy merchandize, and thy riches that sunk thee so precipitately in the deep? The verdant vale adorned by the elegant structures of Caeriolyn, enchants the traveller no more! And gloomy horror has succeeded to the once pleasing gaieties of PenDamon! And next Caeriolyn in situation, and the next it in the dreadfulness of its fall, stood the once beauteous town of Almuda, but its beauty could not calm the rage of Destruction! Its structures dissolved before the frowns of Desolation, like temporary fabrics of ice at the approach of the scorching verdure-destroying season. But the names of these populous towns, and of the Mayor-governed town of Merlin, are scarce recorded in history. These once celebrated marts are now no more remembered; the gloomy, lasting waters of oblivion have forever covered them; and the throngs that once crowded their Fairs! In the wellcelebrated plain, once aspired to Heaven the

lofty towers of ten celebrated churches; while seven more boasted the beauty of their sacred structures, at no remote distance, and rivalled them in their costly ornaments, and their pomp of public worship. Was it the purity of the devout worshippers' piety that preserved eight sacred fabrics from the rage of the waves? eight sacred Heaven-preserved structures still standing, on the utmost extremity of the land, on the perilous borders of the deep. Must the veracity of the divine songs of antiquity be disputed? or shall the eye of fancy be still directed to the spot, where once stood four times seven busy mills, or her ears be still stunned with the sound of their incessant motion, while the hand of Industry spared no pains to repair them, nor the streams of abundance to supply them? Nor were the hundred flax mills of the plain less busy, where the recollective muse remembers the rural spinster, and the city housewife, with emulous industry, crowding for useful stores to supply the demands of art and ingenuity. For the chaste children of Health, Industry, and Ingenuity, on these peaceful plains slaked their thirst in three clear and exhaustless fountains, and seldom tasted of the bitter waters of repentance. What will not

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the hand of Ingenuity be able to effectuate? From the bosom of the sloping hills, the useful ore of lead, and four different species of excellent sulphur, were extracted in abundance.. The world had now experienced many extraordinary vicissitudes, and its prosperous events had been succeeded by many an adverse fortune, when in that disastrous year the three thousandth, five hundredth, and ninety-first from the creation, the fertile plains of the Lowland Hundred were covered with barren sands, and its fair causeways deformed by the incursions of the sea, whose swelling billows rose with irresistible strength, and baffled all human opposition. Gwrgan with the bushy beard, had found his way to the throne, and began his precarious reign over the plains, and the fickle hand of Summer had strown his way with deceitful flowers; but the scowering Winter that soon succeeded, dissipated them with its tempests, or covered them by its inundations. From this disastrous period, till the year three thousand seven hundred and eighteen, from the era of the creation, the billows bursting over their bounds, continued to encroach on the golden treasures of the plain; the Fates soon spun out the thread of the

sinking kingdom's destiny; and the days of Morgan were succeeded by the sable nights of Desolation. Fifteen ill-omened monarchs lamented the falling powers of their line, and witnessed the fate-shaken honours of their province falling like the yellow withered leaf of Autumn, from Gwrgan to Morgan's dismal day, which terminated in the endless night of desolation. In his luckless reign, the boundless plain was converted to a shoreless sea, the intermediate space between Penrhyn and the rocks of Aberglaslyn, can give but a faint idea of its length; but some hasty notion may be formed of its spacious breadth, by casting the wandering eye over the main from Clogwyn to Patrick's sunken causeway, and its gloomy, judgment-struck habitation.

ANONYMOUS.

The Ystwyth.

The Ystwyth rises in the mountains from a Marsh ground, as Leland says "owt of a Mares grounde caullid Blaine Ustwith, iii miles from Llangibike on Wy." The first river it receives is the Duliw, which rises in a mountain about a mile from Llyn Iwan ucha, one of the heads