Thomas Beddoes to Anna Beddoes, [September 1797] [fragment]
A letter evidently written with the most careless haste, describing to Mrs. Beddoes an excursion of a few days into the Principality, with two friends, one of whom was a sufferer from a nervous complaint. ‘While at Rhayader,’ says he, ‘the spirit of adventure decided us for the Devil's bridge; this was leaving home far behind; we took a chaise, traversed long tracts of mountain, and called at most houses in these unfrequented solitudes. We passed no turnpike in fifty miles. There was often no track. At the Devil’s bridge we found wildernesses worthy of a gang of Salvator’s banditti. Conceive declivities impenetrably covered with wood; deep ravines cut by rapid rivers; this mass of deep green; the sound of numerous waterfalls; and inclosing all, as if to shut out the world, bare mountains with their crested and corniced summits. The stillness of the woods contrasted strangely with the rapid motion and incessant roaring of the cataracts, of which one is above 100 feet in length. The sensations excited by this combination are terribly sublime; in nervous people they would be painful. One of our party, as he was crossing the bridge after a moonlight view of these woods and waters, felt as if a murderer was at his heels, with intent to throw his body into the depths below.’
Published: Stock, p. 23