hrough gorse
and heather, occasionally leaping a deep drain. At last I reached it.
It was a small lake. Wearied and panting I flung myself on its bank and
gazed upon it.

There lay the lake in the low bottom, surrounded by the heathery
hillocks; there it lay quite still, the hot sun reflected upon its
surface, which shone like a polished blue shield. Near the shore it was
shallow, at least near that shore upon which I lay. But farther on, my
eye, practised in deciding upon the depths of waters, saw reason to
suppose that its depth was very great. As I gazed upon it my mind
indulged in strange musings. I thought of the afanc, a creature which
some have supposed to be the harmless and industrious beaver, others the
frightful and destructive crocodile. I wondered whether the afanc was
the crocodile or the beaver, and speedily had no doubt that the name was
originally applied to the crocodile.

"Oh, who can doubt," thought I, "that the word was originally intended
for something monstrous and horrible? Is there not something horrible in
the look and sound of the word afanc, something connected with the
opening and shutting of immense jaws, and the swallowing of writhing
prey? Is not the word a fitting brother of the Arabic timsah, denoting
the dread horny lizard of the waters? Moreover, have we not the voice of
tradition that the afanc was something monstrous? Does it not say that
Hu the Mighty, the inventor of husbandry, who brought the Cumry from the
summer-country, drew the old afanc out of the lake of lakes with his four
gigantic oxen? Would he have had recourse to them to draw out the little
harmless beaver? Oh, surely not. Yet have I no doubt that when the
crocodile had disappeared from the lands, where the Cumric language was
spoken, the name afanc was applied to the beaver, probably his successor
in the pool, the beaver now called in Cumric Llostlydan, or the
broad-tailed, for tradition's voice is strong that the beaver has at one
time been called the afanc." Then I wondered whether the pool before me
had been the haunt of the afanc, considered both as crocodile and beaver.
I saw no reason to suppose that it had not. "If crocodiles," thought I,
"ever existed in Britain, and who shall say that they have not, seeing
that there remains have been discovered, why should they not have haunted
this pool? If beavers ever existed in Britain, and do not tradition and
Giraldus say that they have, why should th