I am a Briton by nation, what you would call a Welshman; my county is Merionethshire, and it is a bony land, having many mighty hills, and one in particular a few miles off from our house that was called Cader Idris, which is the highest hill in the kingdom, and no doubt also in the world. I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, so David sang, from whence cometh my strength, and indeed wherever I went in my childhood I lifted up my eyes to the hills. I know not if it made me strong, but it transported me after a fashion because hills bring distant places close up, so that in a moment you feel yourself elsewhere just by looking. You even feel, if you gaze long enough at them, that you are no longer standing on the earth but flying or falling, since everything you behold is at the wrong angle, sheep, stone walls, rocks, thornbushes. Our house was on a slope, so that when you went in through the front door and stood in the dark passage, the warm gloom of the hall, with a fire smouldering in it and the smells of smoke and, oftentimes, of boiling soup, was to the right and down, while the parlour was to the left and up. There was a fireplace in the parlour too but it was seldom lit, so the place always smelled of damp. The smells of the house lay one on top of another, and over all was the smell of sheep grease.