3-011-819 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"A November Day in Nant-Francon", by J. C. Reed, in the exhibition of the Institute of Painters in Water Colours, 1864. Engraving of a painting. 'North Wales is the most favourite resort of the English painter as well as tourist...There are few views so magnificent as those afforded in this vale. Indeed, with the exception of Llanberis Pass, the finest gorge in the whole country is that formed by the enormous block of mountain of which Carneddau, Davydd, and Llewelyn, are the centres, seen on the spectator's right hand in the picture, and the still more savage and precipitous chain on the left intervening between Llyn Ogwen and Llanberis, and which at one point seems as if about to close over the pass and block it up. The name of Nant-Francon - "the Glen of Beavers" - recalls the ancient time when the stream of the Ogwen was a haunt of these strange creatures...The terrors of the scene depicted in Mr. Reed's fine drawing are aggravated by the snows and rains of early winter, which are already whitening the slopes of the mountains, hanging murkily in the sky, swelling the streams into angry, foaming cataracts, and imparting to the whole scene a deeper and more sombre aspect of desolateness'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.