Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (1 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)Hurlbert, William Henry
History
Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (1 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)
Hurlbert, William Henry
Ireland -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
A remarkably handsome, rosy-faced young groom, a model of manhood in
vigour and grace, presently brought us up a wagonette with a pair of
stout nags, and a driver in a suit of dark-brown frieze, whose head
seemed to have been driven down between his shoulders. He never lifted
it up all the way to Gweedore, but he proved to be a capital jarvey
notwithstanding, and knew the country as well as his horses.
Not long after leaving the town by a road which passes the huge County
Asylum (now literally crammed, I am told, with lunatics), we passed a
ruined church on the banks of a stream. Here the country people, it
seems, halt and wash their feet before entering Letterkenny, failing
which ceremony they may expect a quarrel with somebody before they get
back to their homes. This wholesome superstition doubtless was
established ages ago by some good priest, when priests thought it their
duty to be the preachers and makers of peace.
We soon left the wooded country of the Swilly and began to climb into
the grand and melancholy Highlands of Donegal. The road was as fine as
any in the Scottish Highlands, and despite the keen chill wind, the
glorious and ever-changing panoramas of mountain and strath through
which we drove were a constant delight, until, just as we came within
full range of Muckish, the giant of Donegal, the weather finally broke
down into driving mists and blinding rain.
We pulled up near a picturesque little shebeen, to water the horses and
get our Highland wraps well about us. Out came a hardy, cheery old
farmer. He swept the heavens with the eye of a mountaineer, and
exclaimed:--"Ah! it's a coorse day intirely, it is." "A coorse day
intirely" from that moment it continued to be.
Happily the curtain had not fallen before we caught a grand passing
glimpse of the romantic gorge of Glen Veagh, closed and commanded in the
shadowy distance by the modern castle of Glenveagh, the mountain home of
my charming country-woman, Mrs. Adair.
Thanks to its irregular serpentine outline, and to the desolate majesty
of the hills which environ it, Lough Veagh, though not a large sheet of
water, may well be what it is reputed to be, a rival of the finest lochs
in Scotland. No traces are now discernible on its shores of the too
celebrated evictions of Glen Veagh. But from the wild and rugged aspect
of the surrounding country it is probable enough that these evictions
were to the evicted a blessing in disguise, and that their descendants
are now enjoying, beyond the Atlantic, a measure of prosperity and of
happiness which neither their own labour nor the most liberal
legislation could ever have won for them here. We caught sight, as we
drove through Mrs. Adair's wide and rocky domain, of wire fences, and I
believe it is her intention to create here a small deer forest. This
ought to be as good a stalking country as the Scottish Highlands,
provided the people can be got to like "stalking" stags better than
landlords and agents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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