The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1878-02-14
Castles i'm Wales.

The border barons of Norman blood,
who took possession of this region forci-
bly, when William the ConqueIor became
King of England, were compelled to
hem in the Welsh people by chain of
tremendous military castles. The Sax
ons were under like necessity in their
day, but the fortresses they erected to
protect themselves from the Welsh were
not very strong. They were usually of
timber, with banks and palisades for fur
ther strength about the domestic offices,
and moat around all, with no other wall
than the mound thrown up in digging it..
These structures were not enough for the
Norman lords marchers; in some cases
they used the site of the Saxon fortress
to build their stone castles on, but the
site was all that had value to them. In
order to keep what they had forcibly
siezed they must entrench themselves in
strongholds capable of defying the most
terrific sieges, and which furthermore
must be large enough to hold their fami
lies and retainers, as we'll as their war
riors in enormous numbers. Hence the
prodigious strength and extent of the
border castles, whose ruins now make the
country picturesque, and which provoked
from DR.. johnson the remark that the
court yard of castle in Wales is capa-
BILE of containing all the castles in Scot
land. Hence the extensive ruins Of huge
Caerphilly" described in former paper,
of Raglan, of Chepstow, and OF many
others which dot the landscape at inter
walls so frequent as to tell an eloquent
story. 1t is difficult to comprehend, in
these days of equality before the law, the
state of society which existed in media
val times, when absolute monarchy was
set up here in every little district, with a
baronial castle for centre; but one is
amazingly helped toward such compre-
tensions by roaming about from one ruin
to another, and discovering that it is &C
tually possible to visit several within the
limits of single day. 1t is the state
ment of a romantic fact to say that the
border bristled with these feudal vultures'
nests; but it makes the matter practical
to degree that is positively sensational
like ralistic stage etfect-to set out
on a tramp over this storied land OF the
border barcns, and find that your first
five miles brings YOU to Caldecot Castle,
your second to Chepstow Castle, your
third to Tintern Abbey eloquent of the
same tale the castles tell, though in diff
ferent wsy), whence nine miles bring you
to Monmouth, and seven more to Raglan,
and that you have passed en- route, and
without pausing to look at them, the
ruins of Penhow, Pencoed, Mayor, Liam
vair, Dinham, Striguil, St Briavels, and
nameless others. In the small border
county of Monmouthshire, which is not
so large as Oneida County in New York
"a centre of the WEIGH in America), there
are no fewer than twenty five ruined cas-
ties, besides many priories and abbeys,
each with its tale of battles, sieges, for
tunes, during the centuries that stretch
between the Norman Conquest and the
DAYS of Oliver Cromwell. OF the least OF
these ruins many interesting pages may
be written. Mayor and Pencoed stand
within two miles of each other. Any
where else but in Wales each would be a
tourists lion, which enthusiastic travel
lers would journey far to see.-Wir'
Skies, in Harper's Magazine.