of promise when he whispered me, the three young fellows are Catholics, but John is a Protestant, a good Christian, a God-fearing man, a man whom it is well to have with us, when venturing in equinoxial weather in an open boat, some leagues out on the Atlantic; O! then, says I, this man cares nothing about the saints or good people. A well-found boat, four springing oars set in motion by as elastic backs, soon brought us out into the middle of the bay of Skull; not a breath was on the ocean; the grey mist of the morning had risen, and was dissolved in the clear cold atmosphere; the sun walked above in its pride of light, the harbour had become a looking glass for the hills and headlands to dress themselves in, and assume a softer and sweeter countenance, as

The smooth expanse received, impressed

Calm Nature's image on its watery breast. The bold and cave-cut promontory;

the

lofty light house; the ruined castle; the green island; the sable rock, with all its

gulls and cormorants, round which the tide

growled, danced, and boiled; all these were reflected and prolonged in westward lines upon the bosom of the deep, and above, towering as the lord paramount of the mountain range, stood Mount Gabriel.

Reader, if you have never been in the South Western district of Ireland; if you have not seen these great bulwarks, that stand as redoubts to the continent of Europe against the force of the great ocean, you cannot form, from seeing English hills, or even Welsh or Wicklow mountains, an idea of these out-works of Ireland; they look as if Noah's deluge here first operated, and the windows of Heaven had opened here particularly, and washed them bare to the very bone. No bog, no soil, no verdure on them - all grey and rugged in the anatomy of their stratification: amidst these everlasting hills, arose in peculiar prominence, Mount Gabriel. Why, my lads, said I, is yonder mountain called by such an outlandish name; one would think it was brought here by Oliver Cromwell, it has such an un-Irish-such a

Saxon name? O then, says Pat Hayes, who was one of the most talkative of the party, a fine youth, with a huge curly head, that disdained the wearing of a hat; a broad face, giving ample latitude for the grin of an immense mouth, which as belonging to an Ichthyophagous, or fish-eating animal, was set with teeth bright and sharp like those of a sea lion, or a walrus. O! says Pat, it is a pity that the blockhead is not here to tell the gentleman the story about this, for sure and certain such poor garsoons as the likes of us, know little, and care not the tail of a herring for such ould stories. And who, said I, is the blockhead? O, says my friend the Vicar, who sat beside me at the helm, the blockhead is an old man living up on the mountain, who, from his great memory, his knowledge of cures for cattle, charms against fairy-struck people, experience in bleeding, acquaintance with legends about the good people, the Milesians, and Fin M'Coul, is called far and near, the BLOCKHEAD.

My dear fellow, will you to-morrow bring

me to that man; I would pilgrimage over many of your hills to get into chat with him; for said I to myself, this is just the man that I want. And Crofton Croker shall not make all the Fairy legends of the South his own. -Ah my good friend, do bring me to the blockhead to morrow. Why, yes, to be sure, -but stay, can you speak Irish? Not a word, to my sorrow be it spoken. Well then go home first and learn Irish, for Thady Mahony can speak no other language.— Well boys, can none of you (as I cannot get it out of the blockhead) tell me about Mount Gabriel; O! yes, Sir, says Pat Hayes, my godmother used to tell me it was called after the Angel Gabriel, who came, you know, from Heaven to deliver the happy message of mercy to the Virgin-ever blessed be her name. And so on his return, as he was flying back, he looked down upon Ireland, and as he knew that in time to come, this honest island would never part with the worship and duty it owes to the Mother of God, he resolved to take a peep at the happy land,

that St. Patrick was to bestow for ever on the

Virgin. So down he came, and perched on the western peak of that mountain; the mark, they say, of his standing is there to this day, and his ten toes are branded on the rock, as plain as if I clasped my four fingers and thumb upon a sod of drying turf; and just under the blessed mark, is a jewel of a lake, round as a turner's bowl, alive with trout; and there are islands on it that float up and down, east and north, and south; but every Lady-day they come floating to the western point, and there they lie fixed under the crag that holds the track of the Angel's foot. With conversation such as this, we beguiled the row until we passed two long islands that sheltered the entrance of the bay of Skull-and now we were abroad on what appeared to a poor landsman like me, to be the great Western Ocean; and oh!

* A Correspondent acquainted with the country and the Irish language, informs me that the Irish name for the mountain is Knockcushthe-Knock signifies hill, and cush-foot. -The Mountain of the foot,