Here we purchased some good new potatoes, butter, eggs and milk, on which we dined satisfactorily. We then faced the mountain which we crossed near the summit, being desirous to gain Gougane Barra by the shortest possible route. A steep ascent gives the traveller fresh impulses and an irrepressible desire to bound down at the other side. It seems to spring from that principle of action and reaction pervading all nature. At the northern base of Shehigh, after traversing some miles of bog, we found ourselves entering the pass of Ceimenagh. Though that Pass had been recently immortalised in the unequalled verses of Denis Florence M'Carthy,[12] and I had learned to love a spot where echoes of minstrelsy so soft and passionate had found a "local habitation," I was ignorant of its locality and entirely unprepared for the surpassing grandeur of the scene, which, in the full blaze of a harvest moon burst upon my view. My comrade was even more startled than I, and we paused at every turn of that enchanting passage to gaze upon the masses of rock projecting over our heads hundreds of feet in the air, and casting their dark rude outlines upon the clear autumn sky. The pass is a mile long, while in no one spot can many yards' distance be seen on either side. The road seems to lose itself every moment in the bowels of the mountain, but as you proceed, you find a new avenue of escape, and a more fantastic group of impending rocks of a yet more entrancing beauty than that you had left behind. In such a scene one could have no feeling of weariness and no sense of fear. Neither could he doubt man's truth any more than God's omnipotence. We lingered in the solitude and drank the moonbeams as they strayed through disjointed rocks and fell silvery and glowing on our path. Our reverie ended in a mistake, for we unconsciously passed the point where we should turn to Gougane Barra, then the scene of a ceremony, half religious, half superstitious, as it has been during the autumn season from time immemorial. People come great distances to perform "stations" on the ruins of a very ancient church on poor Callanan's "green little island." We were advised against returning, but told to seek shelter in a publichouse at a place called Ballingeary, on the banks of Lough Lua through which the infant Lee runs. We found the house quite full, in consequence of a fair which was to be held the Monday following at Bantry. We were accordingly refused; but we insisted on remaining in the house. We had some milk and whisky, in which we asked the host to join us, and after one or two potations, he and his wife offered to give us their own bed and remain up. We thankfully and gladly accepted the offer. I know not whether they recognised us, and if not, it is not easy to account for the generous kindness that prompted such a sacrifice. The next day being Sunday, we proposed to spend it wandering about the lovely lake in the bosom of the hill, and to return in the evening to dinner.