INTRODUCTION. WITHIN the past year or two, some of the most eloquent pens in Great Britain have written of Irish scenery in a strain of the highest eulogy. It has been urged as a reproach to Englishmen, (and, we may add, Irishmen,) who can afford to travel, that they are given to tedious and expensive tours abroad, while within a few days' journey of home, they leave unvisited scenery incomparably finer than much of what they go so far to see. Happily, the old caricature depicting Ireland as a land where nothing is to be seen but fighting, drinking, and superstition, has been taken down from its high place, and it is no small satisfaction that the first of English journals has of late repeatedly recommended our island as one of the most desirable places in the world in which to spend a holiday with pleasure and profit. And already has the spread of correct information regarding Ireland borne fruit. The number of Englishmen visiting our shores increases day by day, and there is reason to hope that the increasing intercourse, by making this country and its people better known, will lead to a wider diffusion of kindly feeling between the two nations, and to other results beneficial to both, especially to our own. Apart from the interest-and it is deep and manifold—which he feels in the subject itself, these considerations constitute a motive strong enough to make the writer of the following pages desire to bring under the notice of the public a district which possesses as many attractions for the tourist as any part of the United Kingdom. Donegal is unsurpassed in beauty of mountain, lake, and glen ; its coast offers some of the finest cliff scenery in the world. What has been said a few weeks back of Ireland in the London Times is especially applicable to this district :-"Ireland, with her vast uncultivated tracts, her wild mountains, her broad lakes, her teeming rivers, is just the place for a keen sportsman, who wishes for a few weeks of healthy |