IRISH INSliCT-lIUNTEH. 163 



we could calculate upon getting over if we waited tor the tide, 

 — with the possibiUty of being benighted after all, was not the 

 most comfortable thing to think of. What was to be done ? 

 To stay there was impossible ; to go back, mortifying. The 

 hand of sickness had visited even this remote corner of the 

 globe. A severe epidemic had recently proved very fatal, and 

 two-thirds of the poor families were still lying under its effects. 

 An English lady and gentleman were spoken of as having 

 visited them a few days before, and been very kind. In oiu- 

 dilemma a brawny old man at last said that we might possibly 

 get at a boat — which he called by some particular name that I 

 could not catch — in a direction he pointed, down the Killery. 

 We seized the suggestion. He accompanied us over a rough 

 promontory, and after scrambling about a mile along a most 

 wretched and fatiguing beach, extremely wet and slippery, we 

 reached a rude kind of fishing-boat. The old man brought 

 the owner and his crew out of some invisible place ; and 

 manned by one stout girl, and three miserably ragged men, 

 he pushed us oft" with his blessing. The girl was bow oar, 

 and with her broad bare feet on the stretching-board, pulled 

 away most manfully. She had an open expressive counte- 

 nance, and an air of strength and command about her almost 

 majestic, and might have sat for a full-length of Boadicea 

 with great effect. Our wild convoy, — the deep repose of every 

 thing around, — the loveliness and magnificence of the scenery, 

 — the buried solitude which sank into a feeling almost oppres- 

 sive, as we gained the centre of the Killery, and mountain 

 after mountain rose in gloomy grandeur, and seemed to inclose 

 us in nature's interminable and everlasting barriers, — combined 

 with a sense of our utter insignificance here, so blasting to the 

 self-consideration and importance of our city lives and actions, 

 where ice appear to be the secret springs and movements of 

 every thing around, — all came over our spirits like a spell, not 

 unmingled with awe. . . . On landing we had to clamber up the 

 rocks on the opposite shore, but shortly fell in with a new line 

 of road recently cut through this mountainous district. At a 

 place called Lahee, further up the Killery, where this road 

 crosses it by means of a ferry, " the Joyce" of Inglis's tour 

 still resides. 



As a general rule, wherever there are two roads in a country, 

 an old one and a new one, if you are encumbered with a 



