A GUIDE. 21 



I stopped at Newport ; it was the last cluster of houses 

 arrogating to itself the title of a town, that I should now meet 

 with, for I had reached the ultima Thule of civilized Europe 

 and when I had given directions to the post- master touching 

 the transmission of my letters in my cousin's bag, I looked 

 around me, and took a silent but mournful farewell of 

 Christendom. 



I found at the public-house that my kinsman had provided 

 for my farther progress into terra incognita. A couple of 

 rudely- constructed vehicles were waiting to receive myself and 

 personal property, and a wild bare-legged mountaineer, with a 

 leathern bag strapped across his shoulders, announced himself 

 as guide. "Had he no horse?'' "Devil a harsef but he 

 would warrant he would keep up with me," and away we 

 went under a salute of our dogs, and the furtive glances of 

 sundry ladies with their hair in papers. 



Some distance from the town we crossed an ancient bridge 

 of many arches, through which an extensive lake communi- 

 cates with the sea, and farther on passed the old tower of 

 Carrigahowla. Our route w r as contiguous to the sea on the 

 left were the numerous islands of Clew Bay; on the right 

 an extensive chain of savage hills and barren moorland. The 

 road now became hardly passable ; constructed without the 

 least regard to levelness, here it dipped into a ravine, and 

 there breasted some sudden hill, inaccessible to any carriage 

 but the light machines we travelled with. Its surface w r as 

 rough, and interrupted by a multitude of loose stones ; while 

 some of the bridges were partially dilapidated, and others had 

 never been completed. In these, the ragged line of granite 

 which formed the key-stones of the arches stood nakedly up, 

 and presented a barrier that no common carriage could overtop 

 without endangering its springs and harness. Yet this forlorn 

 road is the only communication with a highly improvable 

 country, covering at least fifty square miles, with numerous 

 and profitable islands attached, and an immense line of sea- 

 coast, possessing rich fisheries, and abounding in kelp-weed 

 and manure ! And why was this neglect ? Were the pro- 

 prietors of this deserted district so cold to that true spring 

 of human action, self-aggrandizement, as to omit providing 

 an outlet for the sources of their opulence ? Were there no 

 public monies allocated to these abandoned corners of the 

 earth, and so much lavishly expended on many a useless 



