"OwenMEdwards-AShortHistoryOfWales" - читать интересную книгу автора (Edwards Owen M)

CHAPTER I--WALES



Wales is a row of hills, rising between the Irish Sea on the west and
the English plains on the east. If you come from the west along the
sea, or if you cross the Severn or the Dee from the east, you will
see that Wales is a country all by itself. It rises grandly and
proudly. If you are a stranger, you will think of it as "Wales"--a
strange country; if you are Welsh, you will think of it as "Cymru"--a
land of brothers.

The geologist will tell you how Wales was made; the geographer will
tell you what it is like now; the historian will tell you what its
people have done and what they are. All three will tell you that it
is a very interesting country.

The rocks of Wales are older and harder than the rocks of the plains;
and as you travel from the south to the north, the older and harder
they become. The highest mountains of Wales, and some of its hills,
have crests of the very oldest and hardest rock--granite, porphyry,
and basalt; and these rocks are given their form by fire. But the
greater part of the country is made of rocks formed by water--still
the oldest of their kind. In the north-west, centre, and west--about
two-thirds of the whole country,--the rocks are chiefly slate and
shale; in the south-east they are chiefly old red sandstone; in the
north-east, but chiefly in the south, they are limestone and coal.

Its rocks give Wales its famous scenery--its rugged peaks, its
romantic glens, its rushing rivers. They are also its chief wealth--
granite, slate, limestone, coal; and lodes of still more precious
metals--iron, lead, silver, and gold--run through them.

The highest mountain in Wales is Snowdon, which is 3,570 feet above
the level of the sea. For every 300 feet we go up, the temperature
becomes one degree cooler. At about 1,000 feet it becomes too cold
for wheat; at about 1,500 it becomes too cold for corn; at about
2,000 it is too cold for cattle; mountain ponies graze still higher;
the bleak upper slopes are left to the small and valuable Welsh
sheep.

There are three belts of soil around the hills--arable, pasture, and
sheep-run--one above the other. The arable land forms about a third
of the country; it lies along the sea border, on the slopes above the
Dee and the Severn, and in the deep valleys of the rivers which
pierce far inland,--the Severn, Wye, Usk, Towy, Teivy, Dovey, Conway,
and Clwyd. The pasture land, the land of small mountain farms, forms
the middle third; it is a land of tiny valleys and small plains, ever