But stock not by hundred or thousand but by hundreds of thousands. I can assert he is lord of millions; the whole promontory of Horn-head, containing upwards of 1000 acres, is one well-stocked rabbit-warren, and the sum arising from the fur alone of these rabbits amounts to a handsome income. besides this, there is not an ocean-bird that dips its wing in the waves of the Atlantic, the gull, gannet, penguin, peterel, and albatross, and all those numerous and nåmeless aquatic creatures that live and sleep upon the ocean these come in countless millions to the precipitous cliffs of Horn-head, for six weeks in the summer, to build their nests on its inaccessible rocks, propagate their species, and then return to be seen no more until the following summer. Birds here are seen of species unknown in the West of Ireland, and which never on any other occasion are seen near land. Therefore, after partaking of most genuine hospitality in the mansion of Horn-head, the young gentlemen of the family accompanied us on the following day to the cliff. Did Shakspear see these enormous battlements of Ireland? Dover cliff, of which he gives such a sublime description, is perhaps magnified in the imagery of the poet but certainly I conceive Horn-head comes up to his representation. One would think the Muse had caught up from Stratford-upon-Avon the Poet of Nature, and dropt him on this mighty promontory, until he had made up in his mind's eye the whole magnificent scene. How fearful And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low ! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air, -Nothing indeed could be more astonishing than the whole scene; there was a mist hanging over the Atlantic, that gave a mysteri ousness to its magnificence, like the way into the eternal world" shadows, clouds, and darkness rested upon it;" there was no wind, it was a perfect calm, and yet the roll of the waves and the roar of the tides as they rushed and rolled amidst the caverned cliffs, communicated an awful grandeur to the whole scene. It was as the moan of suffering endurance under the ceaseless vexation of the Atlantic. This promontory as I have before mentioned, has a cliff beetling and overhanging the ocean, and protruded like a horn, from whence it derives its name; adjoining which a signal station was erected during the war, in which a poor man was induced to reside. Oh! what a horrid place for a poor mortal to reside when the ocean tempest came on; but now in the midst of July the scene was quite different-if it was a scene pregnant with grandeur, it was also one teeming with life; the whole surface of the boggy or mossy soil of which the mountain was composed, even to the edge of the cliff, was burrowed with holes caused by certain aquatic birds that make their nests in holes in the ground; the soil was in this way so hollow, that there was much danger in walking; thence for 1500 feet down the precipice on every ledge of the rock, on every slope, or crag, or point where a nest could be placed, it was black with birds carrying on the process of incubation, all arranged in their different families and species on the face of the precipice; and here and there on some bolder and broader prominence, too high from below and too deep from above to be accessible to man, were eagles' nests, and large as turkeys, and the old birds from thirty to forty at a time floating in mid air above, shrieking and challenging from on high our audacity in molesting their sovereignty. Oh! that some Atheist standing on these cliffs, and surveying this magnificent scene, would reflect upon what it was that brought all these unimaginable myriads of sea fowl to meet at certain unvaried seasons on these precipices-must he not ask himself who imposed a necessity on these dwellers young ones as of the trackless ocean to congregate here, coming thousands of leagues from east and west, from all the winds of heaven, and guided hither by an instinct surer than pole star, or cynosure, or magnet. How they came, how they returned, who fixed the unerring law on them, and see how generation after generation they still obey. But these animals of God have never fallen-they never broke the original law imposed-they still give God the obedience of unbroken fealty and instinct. Man alone is the law breaker, and sin has degraded reason, while instinct is upright; or as the prophet Jeremiah says "Yea the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed time, and the turtle and the crow and the swallow observe the time of their coming, but my people know not the judgment of the Lord." Here the country people carry on a more fearful trade than even gathering samphire-namely, the taking these birds off their nests, these dark dwellers of the ocean are all furnished with a covering of the finest down, |