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encounter many
hardships, it was best to make a beginning. I had crossed the ocean
with tolerable comfort for twenty-four dollars, and was determined to
try whether England, where I had been told it was almost impossible to
breathe without expense, might not also be seen by one of limited
means.
The fore cabin was merely a bare room, with a bench along one side,
which was occupied by half a dozen Irishmen in knee-breeches and
heavy brogans. As we passed out of the Clarence Dock at 10 P.M., I
went below and managed to get a seat on one end of the bench, where I
spent the night in sleepless misery. The Irish bestowed themselves
about the floor as they best could, for there was no light, and very soon
the Morphean deepness of their breathing gave token of blissful

unconsciousness.
The next morning was misty and rainy, but I preferred walking the deck
and drying myself occasionally beside the chimney, to sitting in the
dismal room below. We passed the Isle of Man, and through the whole
forenoon were tossed about very disagreeably in the North Channel. In
the afternoon we stopped at Larne, a little antiquated village, not far
from Belfast, at the head of a crooked arm of the sea. There is an old
ivy-grown tower near, and high green mountains rise up around. After
leaving it, we had a beautiful panoramic view of the northern coast.
Many of the precipices are of the same formation as the Causeway;
Fairhead, a promontory of this kind, is grand in the extreme. The
perpendicular face of fluted rock is about three hundred feet in height,
and towering up sublimely from the water, seemed almost to overhang
our heads.
My companion compared it to Niagara Falls petrified; and I think the
simile very striking. It is like a cataract falling in huge waves, in some
places leaping out from a projecting rock, in others descending in an
unbroken sheet.
We passed the Giant's Causeway after dark, and about eleven o'clock
reached the harbor of Port Rush, where, after stumbling up a strange
old street, in the dark, we found a little inn, and soon forgot the Irish
Coast and everything else.
In the morning when we arose it was raining, with little prospect of fair
weather, but having expected nothing better, we set out on foot for the
Causeway. The rain, however, soon came down in torrents, and we
were obliged to take shelter in a cabin by the road-side. The whole
house consisted of one room, with bare walls and roof, and earthen
floor, while a window of three or four panes supplied the light. A fire
of peat was burning on the hearth, and their breakfast, of potatoes alone,
stood on the table. The occupants received us with rude but genuine
hospitality, giving us the only seats in the room to sit upon; except a
rickety bedstead that stood in one corner and a small table, there was no
other furniture in the house. The man appeared rather intelligent, and
although he complained of the hardness of their lot, had no sympathy
with O'Connell or the Repeal movement.
We left this miserable hut, as soon as it ceased raining--and, though
there were many cabins along the road, few were better than this. At

length, after passing the walls of an old church, in the midst of older
tombs, we saw the roofless towers of Dunluce Castle, on the sea-shore.
It stands on an isolated rook, rising perpendicularly two hundred feet
above the sea, and connected with the cliffs of the mainland by a
narrow arch of masonry. On the summit of the cliffs were the remains
of the buildings where the ancient lords kept their vassals. An old man,
who takes care of it for Lord Antrim, on whose property it is situated,
showed us the way down to the castle. We walked across the narrow
arch, entered the ruined hall, and looked down on the roaring sea below.
It still rained, the wind swept furiously through the decaying arches of
the banqueting hall and waved the long grass on the desolate
battlements. Far below, the sea foamed white on the breakers and sent
up an unceasing boom. It was the most mournful and desolate picture I
ever beheld. There were some low dungeons yet entire, and rude
stairways, where, by stooping down, I could ascend nearly to the top of
one of the towers, and look out on the wild scenery of the coast.
Going back, I found a way down the cliff, to the mouth of a cavern in
the rock, which extends under the whole castle to the sea. Sliding down
a heap of sand and stones, I stood under an arch eighty feet high; in