biting one wide waste of red sand; for miles, not a blade of grass, not a particle of verdure, but hills and dales, and undulating swells, smooth, solitary, desolate, reflecting the sun from their polished surface of one uniform flesh-like hue. Fifty years ago, this line of coast was as highly improved in its way as Ards on the opposite side of the bay now is.. it contained the comfortable mansion of Lord Boyne, an old-fashioned manorial house and garden, planted and laid out in the taste of that time, with avenues and terraces, hedges, and statues, surrounded with walled parks. But now not a vestige of this is to be seen- -one common waste of sand-one undistinguished ruin covers all.”*

66

Beyond Rosapenna, at Downing's Bay, there is one of the finest views in Donegal, looking up and down Sheephaven, with the woods of Ards, and the tower of Doe Castle backed up in the distance by the ponderous mass of Muckish."†

Leaving Creeslough, the road traverses a tract of cold moorland, affording a magnificent panorama of mountains away to the right, embracing, besides Muckish, the Errigal group, the Dooish and the Glendowan ranges, while close on the left rises Lough Salt Mountain, (1546.) About three miles from Creeslough, the Owencarrow is crossed at a point

* Otway-Sketches in Donegal.

+ Murray.

about midway between Glenveagh and Glen Lough. The road now enters a long defile, called the Gap, or Barness, intersecting one of the outliners of Lough Salt Mountain. The sides of the Gap are rugged and precipitous, and near the top almost grand. On emerging from the pass, the road strikes into an open country gradually assuming a more cultivated character as you advance, and affording views, especially of the mountains away to the right, which keep the attention constantly excited. Passing Tarmon Catholic Chapel, you drop into Kilmacrenan, a poor village, but "very prettily situated in the mountain valley through which the Lannan river rushes down in picturesque stream."*

Kilmacrenan, or Cill'-Mac-Nenain, is remarkable as the foster-place of St Collum Cille,† and for an abbey founded here by the saint, which endured for many ages. It was the favourite ecclesiastical establishment of the O'Donnells, and the ruins still remain, "consisting of a slender and rather graceful tower, lighted by pointed windows, in the top stage, besides scanty remains of other buildings, surrounded by an enclosure. The parish church is said to have been built on the site of a Franciscan priory, and has over the door the sculptured head of an abbot taken from the abbey." I

*

• Murray.

+ See Hist. Introd.

+ Murray.

EXCURSION TO THE ROCK OF DOON AND

LOUGH SALT.

At a short distance from Kilmacrenan is the Rock of Doon, "on which the O'Donnells were always inaugurated by priests, whom they regarded as descended from St Columb."* This is a rocky eminence, rising sharply from the ground-a splendid natural fortress in days when artillery was unknown. Amongst the many slanderous stories set forth by Giraldus Cambrensis, with no other view, one should suppose, than to asperse the Irish character, is an absurd account of the ceremony of inauguration of the chiefs of Tirconnell.† Lynch, a well-informed author and there does not appear to be any reason to doubt his testimony-has left us the following description of the ceremony. He says, "That when the investiture (of the O'Donnell) took place at Cil-mhac-Crenain, he was attended by O'Ferghail, successor to Columbkille, and O'Gallachius, his marshal, and surrounded by all the estates of the country. The Abbot O'Ferghail put a pure white, straight, unknotted rod into his hand, and said, 'Receive, sire, the auspicious ensign of your dignity, and remember to imitate in your government the whiteness, straightness, and unknottiness Lewis's Topograph. Dict.

+ Vide Apologia pro Hibernia, p. 95. Ed. 1849.

N

of this rod, to the end that no evil tongue may find cause to asperse the candour of your actions with blackness, nor any kind of corruption or tie of friendship be able to pervert your justice; therefore, in a lucky hour, take the government of this people, to exercise the power given you with freedom and security."" "The story-tellers make Doon a head-quarters of the fairies: "There is a sort of cave in the eastern side of the rock, which forms a vestibule to an immense cavern, which is said to be within; this is the favourite abode of the good people, and their council-chamber. A thousand times troops of tiny people are seen entering the cave, and some gifted mortals have observed the door open, and have got a glimpse of sumptuous apartments and splendid banquetings within." + There is a tradition to the effect that Sir Cahir O'Doherty met his death on the Rock of Doon. Sir Cahir's history has all the elements that go to make up a popular hero. His youth, his handsome person, his devotion to the popular cause, and the early period put to his career, have gained him a place in the memory and imagination of most of his countrymen by the side of Hugh Roe and Robert Emmet. Near the Rock is a holy well, which the people hold in great veneration.

*

Apud Otway's Sketches in Donegal.

+ Ibid.

Leaving the Rock of Doon, the tourist may return to the Kilmacrenan road, and ascend at once Lough Salt, a mountain which is the subject of one of Otway's most elaborate sketches. "We at length," he writes, "reached the top of the mountain ridge, and suddenly turning the point of a cliff that jutted out, and checked the road, we came abruptly into a hollow, something like a crater of an extinct volcano, which was filled almost entirely by a lovely lake, on the right hand side of which rose the highest peak of the mountain, composed of compact silicious sandstone-so bare, so white, so serrated, so tempest-worn, so vexed with all the tempests of the Atlantic, that if mere matter could suffer, we might suppose that this lofty and precipitous peak presented the portrait of material endurance; and still, though white was the prevailing colour, yet not one tint or shadowing that decks and paints a mountain's brow was wanting. Here were the brown heath, the gray lichen, the green fern, the red crane's-bill; and straight down the cliff, from its topmost peak to the water's side, was branded in a dark and blasted line, the downward track of a meteoric stone that had fallen from the atmosphere, and, shattering itself against the mountain's crest, rolled down in fiery and smoking fragments into the adjacent lake. Last year, amidst the crash of a thunder-storm, this