We set forth at daybreak one morning, one of the Irishmen leading us, and took our way into the hills. I knew somewhat of the trials and hardships of travel in Ireland, but they were as nought by comparison with that which I encountered that day. The country was covered with close and almost impassable woods, intersected with watercourses of depth sufficient to render hazardous their crossing; and we pierced the woods but to find ourselves in swamp or morass. I was by this time aware of the treacherous nature of these quaggy places; but in spite of all our heedfulness, and notwithstanding that three of us were natives well skilled in their country’s discommodities, we had ofttimes much ado to hold our course. Ever and anon we saw ourselves forced to go round about; and although our guide ordered our going with as diligent carefulness as he might, many times we had need to quit our saddles and lend aid to our horses, to draw them from the deceitful mire of the swamps, in such sort that we made but poor going, and by the middle part of the day had accomplished a mere trifle of our journey. As we were picking our steps thus gingerly over an expanse of spongy ground, overhung by a low beetling cliff, there befell an accident upon which I cannot look back without a mortifying pang, seeing that I was, for all my thirty years, a veteran in war. In all our journey up to that moment we had seen neither man nor any living thing save only the small animals of the woods, and some few wild cattle that smelt us afar off, and vanished from our sight more quickly than eye could follow. On a sudden, before we were aware, there descended upon us from the midst of the bushes on the rock aforesaid a thick shower of spears and stones. A fragment of rock smote upon my headpiece with such violence as wellnigh to stun me; and my horse, made frantic by the sudden onset and the fierce cries of the men in ambush, swerved from the narrow track whereon we were riding, and carried me into the swamp. Dizzy with the shock, I lost my manage of the beast, which, plunging to regain his footing, cast me headlong from my saddle. When I came to myself, I saw my horse in the hands of two kernes, as they are named in that country—rude and ragged fellows, barefoot, half-naked, and armed with light darts and a long and deadly knife which they call a skene. These two were hauling upon my horse’s bridle, to bring the scrambling beast upon the dry ground. One of my Irishmen lay like a senseless log, with a dart in his body; another and my servant were overthrown, and the kernes were standing over them; the third Irishman, as I saw, had wheeled his horse, and was spurring along the track, I supposed to bring help. I made no doubt but that the rascals, when they had finished their work upon my followers, would deal likewise with me, whom they had left hitherto, seeing me dazed and bewildered by my fall.