66 A YEAR OF liberty; or, 



bagged eight good-sized salmon, and about half a hundredweight of 

 trout. 



In bidding adieu to Lough Fern, the reader takes his leave of the 

 last of the spring lakes which lay in our proposed route. Hitherto 

 the drought had injured us but little ; in the coming summer, how- 

 ever, the evil will be found great, so great indeed as to make the 

 season quite an exceptional one. It seems wiser, therefore, to 

 represent the sport such as it really is in average seasons ; this 

 plan will also be more instructive to the stranger, as well as more 

 generally correct. I have avoided all "tall talking" about large 

 bags, and have purposely painted that part of my pictures in very 

 sober colours indeed. 



Well, then, we have taken our leave of spring lakes, but before we 

 part, the reader will yet float on three or four summer seas, and 

 how different will he find them ! Instead of cutting wind and 

 driving rain, there will be flowers and rustling trees, the song of 

 birds, balmy airs, and islands whose delicious beauty would have 

 made the poets of old days fix on them as the abodes of the blessed. 

 These bright days and pleasant things will all come in time ; at 

 present the car is at the door, and we are bound once more for 

 Derry, via Greenon Hill. 



Along the shores of Lough Swilly and over heathery swells we roll, 

 till before us stands the mountain, on the summit of which is the 

 Grianan of Aileach, the most remarkable piece of antiquity in 

 Donegal. Here was the palace of the northern Irish kings, from 

 the most remote antiquity down to the twelfth century ; and what 

 a picture of the time does this place afford. Fancy his Majesty 

 Donnell Mac Loughlin, the last monarch of Ulster, by right of his 

 august title, taking up his quarters for the night on the lee side of 

 the Cyclopean wall, " which served him for parlour, for bed- 

 room, for kitchen and all." This al fresco sort of thing might do 

 very well in the Friendly Islands ; but his majesty and court 

 must have had a damp time of it on Greenon Hill. In the 

 *' Memoirs of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland," there is a minute 

 description of this interesting ruin, together with an ancient poem, 



