f an
army, maintained on the frontiers, to keep down the Welsh. That brave,
half savage people kept attacking the town and setting fire to the
suburbs; but were always beaten back with great slaughter and left so
many of their dead behind them, that the cold-blooded English actually
made a wall of Welshmen's skulls. So, in years after, when the young
Welsh soldiers undertook to take the town; they were obliged, it may be
said, to climb up over their fathers' and grandfathers' heads.

Chester is now a very interesting place, full of quaint, old-fashioned
houses, with high pointed roofs and carved gables turned toward the
streets, which are wide and straight. The walls remain nearly
perfect--not preserved for defence, but as relics of the old fighting
times.

The Dee is a strange looking river when the tide is low, for the sands
stretch far out on each side. Mr. Kingsley, an English author, in a
beautiful song, tells a sad story of a poor girl, who was sent one
evening to call the cattle home across these wide sands. A blinding
mist came up and the tide came in, but Mary never came home--only as
she floated ashore the next morning, drowned.

A little way off the railway track, lies Maes Garmon, the scene of a
great victory gained by the Britons over the Scots and Picts, in 429.

It was in the season of Lent;--the Britons had assembled in great
numbers, in a valley amid the mountains, to listen to the preaching of
St. Germanus and Bishop Lupus. These holy men preached with such
extraordinary power, that thousands of rude warriors came forward,
vociferously professing religion, and eager to be baptized. The enemy,
hearing of this by their scouts, thought that here would be a fine
opportunity to take them by surprise, and hastened to the spot to make
the attack. But St. Germanus somehow got wind of their coming, and,
taking the pick of the warriors; conducted them to a pass through which
the heathen army must enter the valley. As soon as the enemy appeared,
the Saint, lifting the rood in his hands, shouted three times at the
top of his voice, "Hallelujah!" All his warriors repeated the cry, and
the mountains echoed and reechoed it, till their caves and forests
seemed to be alive with lurking Britons. The bloody-minded heathens
were so astonished and frightened by this strange Christian uproar,
that they flung down their aims and ran for their lives! The Britons,
instead of going on with their Hallelujahs, as