Ay, ‘tis even so--point your glasses--and rub your eyes, ‘tis all one; here I am, and here I am likely to remain for some time, but whether a prisoner of war, taken up on a suspicion of espionage, or to be offered as an appeasing sacrifice to the _manes_ of the old Prince of Inismore, you must for a while suspend your patience to learn. According to the _carte du pays_ laid out for me by the fisherman, I left the shore and crossed the summit of a mountain that “battled o’er the deep,” and which after an hour’s ascension, I found sloped almost perpendicularly down to a bold and rocky coast, its base terminating in a peninsula, that advanced for near half a mile into the ocean. Towards the extreme western point of this peninsula, which was wildly romantic beyond all description, arose a vast and grotesque pile of rocks, which at once formed the site and fortifications of the noblest mass of ruins on which my eye ever rested. Grand even in desolation, and magnificent in decay--it was the Castle of Inismore. The setting sun shone brightly on its mouldering turrets, and the waves which bathed its rocky basis, reflected on their swelling bosoms the dark outlines of its awful ruins. * * Those who have visited the Castle of Dunluce, near the Giant’s Causeway, may, perhaps, have some idea of its striking features in this rude draught of the Castle of Inismore. As I descended the mountain’s brow I observed that the little isthmus which joined the peninsula to the main land had been cut away, and a curious danger-threatening bridge was rudely thrown across the intervening gulf, flung from the rocks on one side to an angle of the mountain on the other, leaving a yawning chasm of some fathoms deep beneath the foot of the wary passenger. This must have been a very perilous pass in the days of civil warfare; and in the intrepidity of my daring ancestor, I almost forgot his crime. Amidst the interstices of the rocks which skirted the shores of this interesting peninsula, patches of the richest vegetation were to be seen, and the trees which sprung wildly among its venerable ruins, were bursting into all the vernal luxuriancy of spring. In the course of my descent, several cabins of a better description than I had yet seen, appeared scattered beneath the shelter of the mountain’s innumerable projections; while in the air and dress of the inhabitants (which the sound of my horse’s feet brought to their respective doors,) I evidently perceived a something original and primitive, I had never noticed before in this class of persons here.