22 MULRANNY. 



undertaking elsewhere ? Yes : large sums have been pre- 

 sented and re-presented by the Grand Juries for the last 

 twenty years, but they have been regularly pocketed by those 

 to whose good faith they were entrusted. Would it be be- 

 lieved in England, George, that this atrocious system of pecu- 

 lation has been carried to such an extent, that roads have been 

 passed, as completed, when their lines have been but roughly 

 marked out and bridges been actually paid for, the necessary 

 accounting affidavits having been sworn to in open court, 

 when not a stone was ever laid, and to this day the stream runs 

 without a solitary arch to span its flood from the source to the 

 debouchement ? Ay these delinquencies have been often and 

 notoriously perpetrated, and none have had the courage to 

 drag the criminals to justice. 



At the clachan of Mulranny we struck into a pass in the 

 mountains, and turned our backs upon Clew Bay. A branch 

 from the waters of Black Sod runs some ten miles inland, 

 and meets this opening in the hills, affording a communica- 

 tion by boats with Erris. There my kinsman's galley was 

 waiting for me, and in it I embarked my person and esta- 

 blishment. Taking advantage of a south-westerly wind, the 

 boatmen hoisted their close-reefed lug, and away we shot 

 rapidly towards the entrance of the inlet. From the high 

 lands which rose on every side, the squalls fell more heavily 

 and frequent than I found agreeable ; but in an hour we 

 cleared this confined and dangerous channel, and, running 

 between Currane Point and the island of Innis Biggie, entered 

 Black Sod Bay. 



The passage down the inlet, was marked with several inci- 

 dents which were in perfect keeping with the wild and savage 

 scenery around. A seal would suddenly raise his round head 

 above the surface, gaze for a moment at the boat, and, when 

 he had apparently satisfied his curiosity, sink quietly from our 

 view. In rounding the numerous headlands through which 

 this inlet irregularly winds, w r e often started flocks of curlews,* 



* The bill is long, equally incurvated, and terminated in a blunt point ; 

 nostrils linear, and longitudinal near the base ; tongue short and sharp- 

 pointed ; and the toes are connected as far as the first joint of the mem- 

 brane. 



With the curlew, Linnaeus begins a numerous tribe of birds under the 

 genuine name of Scalopax, which, in his arrangement, includes all the 

 snipes and godwits, amounting, according to Latham, to fortv-two species 



