20 DUBLIN UNIVERSITY 



" The O'Flaherty we met advancing. He led us to his house, and 

 offered sundry edibles, which we declined ; and he accompanied us to 

 Duncngess,* the mighty fortress of a race of which no record remains. 

 It is in magnitude almost a Colosseum, and when perfect was an ellipse, 

 the transverse diameter of which was ninety-one feet. A portion of it 

 has, with the cliff on which it stood, long since fallen into the sea. The 

 wall is curiously constructed, being, in fact, a triple wall in contact, so 

 that if the outer were battered down, a perpendicular face would still 

 present itself; and so of the next, giving a great opportunity to the 

 defenders to punish the besieging foe. It is built of large, naturally- 

 squared stones ; and but two entrances remain : they are very small, 

 about 5 feet 6 inches high. The wall is 15 to 18 feet thick, and may 

 have been 40 high. It is surrounded at some distance by two other 

 walls, outside which is a species of stockade composed of long, sharp- 

 pointed stones, . set with their points inclining outwards. Even at the 

 present day it is no easy matter to get through them. In the interior 

 of the building the rock forms a natural table of gigantic proportions, 

 and in the cliff which intersects the building the sea-fowl breed. The 

 magnitude of the whole, considered conjointly with the spirit and capa- 

 bilities of the present wretched inhabitants of the island, make it the 

 more puzzling to guess who or what people raised so vast a fabric. 

 There are many other buildings of great magnitude which we saw in 

 the island, apparently constructed as places of defence. "What they 

 who built them had to lose on so barren a rock, or they who attacked 

 to gain, is beyond my ken. 



M . After leaving this building I went to where Thompson and I found 

 the Astragalus hypoglottis: it was not; and a fear came over me that we 

 should suffer in fame, as Sir C. Giesecke has done, in finding a plant that 

 could never again be discovered. However, I at last made it out in 

 considerable quantities, collected it, and sent it to the College Garden, 

 where it now grows stoutly. From this we visited the breeding-places 

 of birds (the Alca torda, TJria troile, and Larus argentatus), and saw 



* In the sheet published for the use of the British Association visitors in 1857, this is 

 spelled Dun Aengus, and it is stated that this name " is derived from Aengus (chief of 

 the Firbolg Claim Huamor), who, with Concovar, his brother, was granted these islands 

 by Meave, Queen of Connaught, shortly before the general Christian era." 



