PROGRESS INTO TERRA INCOGNITA. 29 



directions to the postmaster 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 harse I 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 communicates with the sea, and farther on passed 

 the old tower of Carrigahowla. Our route was con- 

 tiguous 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 

 was rough, and interrupted by a multitude of loose 

 stones ; while some of the bridges were partially dilapi- 

 dated, 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 improv- 

 able country, covering at least fifty square miles, with 



