62 LANDSCAPE AND IMAGINATION 



Carboniferous rocks called the Millstone Grit — a for- 

 mation which spreads over a large tract of country 

 farther to the east. Here, in the north-west of Ireland, 

 in the very heart of the region of the ancient crystalline 

 schists, and occupying the highest ground of the dis- 

 trict, lay a little remnant, which demonstrated that a 

 sheet of Millstone Grit once stretched over that remote 

 part of the island, and may have extended much 

 farther westward over tracts where the Atlantic now 

 rolls. And as the Millstone Grit is followed by the 

 Coal-measures, the further inference could be legiti- 

 mately drawn that the Irish coal-fields, now so restricted 

 in extent, once spread far and wide over the hills of 

 Donegal, from which they have since been gradually 

 denuded. Truly the woes of Ireland may be traced 

 back to a very early time, when not even the most 

 ardent patriot can lay blame on the invading Saxon. 



That little cake of grit on the top of Slieve League 

 stands as a monument of waste so prolonged and so 

 stupendous as to be hardly conceivable. It proves 

 that the north-west of Ireland was buried under a sheet 

 of strata many hundreds of feet thick, and that, inch 

 by inch, this overlying mantle of solid stone has been 

 worn away, until it has been reduced at last to merely 

 a few scattered patches of which that of Slieve League 

 is the most westerly. Not only so, but the present 

 system of hill and valley is thus demonstrated not to 

 be part of the primeval architecture of the earth, but 

 to have come into being after that upper envelope of 

 Carboniferous rock had begun to be removed. What 

 a marvellous series of pictures is thus presented to our 

 imagination ! Standing on that bare mountain-top, we 



