. The earth and its inhabitants .. . tain range of Silurian slatecontaining rich veins of lead ore, forms the connecting link between themountains of North and South Wales. It occupies the very centre of the princi-pality, and the Severn and the Wye have their origin in its vallevs. The rangewhich stretches thence south-westward as far as St. Davids Head nowhere exceedsa height of 1,800 feet. Another range extends along the right bank of the Severn,terminating in Long Mountain (1,696 feet), on the border of Shropshire. Thevalley of the Wye is bounded on one side by Radnor Forest, and on the ot
. The earth and its inhabitants .. . tain range of Silurian slatecontaining rich veins of lead ore, forms the connecting link between themountains of North and South Wales. It occupies the very centre of the princi-pality, and the Severn and the Wye have their origin in its vallevs. The rangewhich stretches thence south-westward as far as St. Davids Head nowhere exceedsa height of 1,800 feet. Another range extends along the right bank of the Severn,terminating in Long Mountain (1,696 feet), on the border of Shropshire. Thevalley of the Wye is bounded on one side by Radnor Forest, and on the otherby the Epynt Hills: both are desolate mountain tracts, covered with mosses andpeat or thin herbage. The valley of the Usk separates the Epynt Hills from theBlack Mountains, or Forest Fawr, the highest range of Southern Wales, withinwhich the Brecknock Beacons attain a height of 2,163 feet. These mountainsare covered with herbage, and they derive their epithet black from the dark Fig. 22.—The Breckxock 1 : 600, WoFGr 2-4 10 Miles. appearance of the heath when out of blossom, and their generally desolatecharacter. These hills of South Wales cannot compare in picturesqueness withthose of the north, and the view afforded from many of their summits oftenincludes nothing but bogs or monotonous grassy hills. Less disturbed in theirgeological structure, they are, on the other hand, richer in mineral Wales, besides yielding slate, lead, and a little copper, embraces a coalbasin of small extent, which is, however, likely to become exhausted before the closeof the century; but the carboniferous region which covers so vast an area in thesouth is one of the most productive mineral districts of Great Britain. It wasfirst described by Owen towards the close of the sixteenth century. In area itexceeds any one of the coal basins of England, and it reaches a depth of no less than10,000 Of its hundred seams, sixty-six, of a total average thickness of *
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectgeography, bookyear18
