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For dinner we had salmon and leg of mutton; the salmon from the Dee, the leg from the neighbouring Berwyn.  The salmon was good enough, but I had eaten better; and here it will not be amiss to say, that the best salmon in the world is caught in the Suir, a river that flows past the beautiful town of Clonmel in Ireland.  As for the leg of mutton it was truly wonderful; nothing so good had I ever tasted in the shape of a leg of mutton.  The leg of mutton of Wales beats the leg of mutton of any other country, and I had never tasted a Welsh leg of mutton before.  Certainly I shall never forget that first Welsh leg of mutton which I tasted, rich but delicate, replete with juices derived from the aromatic herbs of the noble Berwyn, cooked to a turn, and weighing just four pounds.

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Came to Tregeiriog, a small village, which takes its name from the brook; Tregeiriog signifying the hamlet or village on the Ceiriog.  Seeing a bridge which crossed the rivulet at a slight distance from the road, a little beyond the village, I turned aside to look at it.  The proper course of the Ceiriog is from south to north; where it is crossed by the bridge, however, it runs from west to east, returning to its usual course, a little way below the bridge.  The bridge was small and presented nothing remarkable in itself:  I obtained, however, as I looked over its parapet towards the west a view of a scene, not of wild grandeur, but of something which I like better, which richly compensated me for the slight trouble I had taken in stepping aside to visit the little bridge.  About a hundred yards distant was a small water mill, 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, Morland, and Crome.

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The name ‘Pump Saint’ signifies ‘Five Saints.’  Why the place is called so I know not.  Perhaps the name originally belonged to some chapel which stood either where the village now stands or in the neighbourhood.  The inn is a good specimen of an ancient Welsh hostelry.  Its gable is to the road and its front to a little space on one side of the way.  At a little distance up the road is a blacksmith’s shop.  The country around is interesting:  on the north-west is a fine wooded hill—­to the south a valley through which flows the Cothi, a fair river, the one whose murmur had come so pleasingly upon my ear in the depth of night.