MEMOIR OF THE LATE ROBERT BALL, LL. D. 
11 
larger weights) of salt they had got, to their friends on shore; the men 
were all at sea. 
“ The island consists of a barren and in most cases a naked rock. 
Each house has, in consequence, one advantage over any elsewhere: it 
is, that the floor is invariably a single flag; as, indeed, are many of the 
fields, which, strange to say, are walled-in with great care. It cannot 
be for the trifling herbage that springs from cracks or fissures, generally ' 
many feet asunder; it should rather be ascribed to the desire man has 
of asserting his right of property, the more strongly as the matter in 
question is least worthy of contention. I must now describe our hotel: 
it was a cottage of three rooms and a set-off, with a courtyard in front. 
We became the tenants of the principal room, from which an officer of 
the Waterguard was ejected without ceremony. This room contained 
two beds, built into the wall after the fashion of the berths of a ship ; 
a dresser, with a teapot of awful dimensions, and two or three glasses 
and plates upon it; a table and two chairs of deal, beautifully perfo¬ 
rated by that most ingenious chap, the Teredo navalis. The ornamental 
part consisted of a chaplet or necklace of sea-fowls’ eggs. This hotel is 
like an expanding portmanteau, and accommodates inmates ad infini¬ 
tum ; as the landlady told us she had seventeen, besides herself and six 
children, in it a few nights before; and while we were there, there was 
a considerable influx of visitors, who were at once taken care of, but 
did not encroach on our territory. 
“ The O’Elaherty we met advancing. He led us to his house, and 
offered sundry edibles, which we declined; and he accompanied us to 
Eunengess,* 1 the mighty fortress of a race of which no record remains. 
It is in magnitude almost a Colosseum, and when perfect was an ellipse, 
the transverse diameter of which was ninety-one feet. A portion of it 
has, with the cliff on which it stood, long since fallen into the sea. The 
wall is curiously constructed, being, in fact, a triple wall in contact, so 
that if the outer were battered down, a perpendicular face would still 
present itself; and so of the next, giving a great opportunity to the 
defenders to punish the besieging foe. It is built of large, naturally- 
squared stones; and but two entrances remain: they are very small, 
about 5 feet 6 inches high. The wall is 15 to 18 feet thick, and may 
have been 40 high. It is surrounded at some distance by two other 
walls, outside which is a species of stockade composed of long, sharp- 
pointed stones, set with their points inclining outwards. Even at the 
present day it is no easy matter to get through them. In the interior 
of the building the rock forms a natural table of gigantic proportions, 
and in the cliff which intersects the building the sea-fowl breed. The 
magnitude of the whole, considered conjointly with the spirit and capa¬ 
bilities of the present wretched inhabitants of the island, make it the 
* In the sheet published for the use of the British Association visitors in 1857, this is 
spelled Dun Aengus, and it is stated that this name “ is derived from Aengus (chief of 
the Firbolg Clann Huamor), who, with Concovar, his brother, was granted these islands 
by Meave, Queen of Connaught, shortly before the general Christian era.” 
