THE IRRIGA TION A GE. 205 



time, and I immediately caught the sad expression it caused. I had 

 then to beg the girl's pardon, for she had taken it so seriously and 

 said with tears in her voice that my words had "scalded"' her heart. 

 All the rippling laughter was ended then for a time. 



This little incident was one illustration I had of the sensitive na- 

 ture of the humble Irish folks, to whose open soul, a wrong, though 

 unintentional, is as a flaw in a gem there, and irradicable while the 

 gem lasts or memory survives. 



They helped me with my instrument down the steep sides of the 

 stream, and shortly after, I left the two poor Irish girls, who smiled at 

 parting as in meeting them noar the broken bridge on the road from 

 Ballycavot to Torhead. 



My objective point was the gulf stream at the narrow "north 

 passage," where the Irish Sea flows between the shores, separated at 

 present by a distance of twelve miles, though some guide-books give 

 it as eleven miles it would be more correct to say "Irish miles, "which 

 an Irishman explained as "being a bit over," which they were obliged 

 to throw in beyond fair measure to their English conquerors. Pair- 

 head is on the way to Torhead. 



There are two giant's causeways, and the sites of both merit in- 

 spection by irrigation engineers. 



Everybody knows the world-famous causeway in Ireland at its 

 near connection with Scotland, so veritably manifest at the isle of 

 Staffa and the intervening isles of Colonsay, Islay and Rathlin. 

 There was, in fact, the Giant's causeway, making Scotland and Ireland 

 one island. In what form that ancient way existed to occupy its near- 

 ly seventy miles junction, will ever remain an inscrutible mystery of 

 nature. 



The traveller in those parts, even if no geologist, sees the 

 break in the basaltic columns, now submerged by the sea, and feels 

 the conviction that the sea has filled the gap, made ages and ages ago 

 by some convulsion of nature, which at the upheaval and subsidence, 

 moulded the conglomerate of earths and metals into the myriads of 

 mighty columns that reach for many miles down the coast of Ireland, 

 southeast of the giant's causeway. This is the one referred to, but 

 this is not now a causeway at all, but the mouth of the passage 

 through which the gulf stream pours in from the north-west in never- 

 pausing volume, estimated as being several cubic miles in extent, 

 daily, and flooding the. fore-shores. 



An isthmus is proposed here, with great works, for gravitating 

 suitable material to make up and fill in the lines of breakwaters ex- 

 tending from land to land. The iron, coal and lime-stone, which form 

 the bold head-land "Fairhead," 640 feet high, is worked now, as it 

 has been for ages past. One mountain rock, Knockalayd, 1800 feet 

 high, also others, as Carnlea and Escot on the Irish coast here, and 



