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Lough Altan, a wild tarn, lies between Errigal and Aghla More. The peasants we met stared at us curiously, but, were very civil, even at a place bearing the ominous name of Bedlam, against which Mr. Burke had warned us as the most troublesome on the way. All the countryside was there attending a fair, and we drove through throngs of red-shawled, barelegged women, ponies, horses, cattle, and sheep.
GWEEDORE, Sunday, Feb. 5th. A morning as soft and bright almost as April succeeded the stormy night. Errigal lifted his bold irregular outlines royally against an azure sky. The sunshine glinted merrily on the swift waters of the Clady, which flows almost beneath our windows from Dunlewy Lough to the sea.
Errigal, which in this mountain atmosphere seems almost to hang over our hotel, but is in reality three or four miles away, stood out superbly against a clear azure sky, wreaths of soft luminous mist floating like a divine girdle half way up his bare volcanic peak. I walked up to the Bunbeg road with Lord Ernest to call upon some peasants whom he knows.
Huge boulders lay tossed and tumbled about as if they had been whirled through the air by the cyclones of some prehistoric age, and dropped at random when the wild winds wearied of the fun. The last landmark we made out through the gathering storm was the pinnacled crest of Errigal.
Our driver was a quiet, sensible fellow, who did not seem to care sixpence about the great Nationality question, though he knew the country very well. Iron was visible in the rocks as we drove along, and we passed some abandoned mining works, "lead and silver mines;" he said, "they were given up long before his time." We got many fine views of the mountains Errigal, Aghla More, and Muckish.
North-West Donegal. A fine afternoon in September. The mountain ranges were bathed in sunshine and the scarred and seamy face of stern old Errigal seemed almost to smile. A gentle breeze stirred the air and the surface of the lakes lay shimmering in the soft autumnal light.
Yet this is very far from being the fact, as some varieties of rock, such as quartzite, not unfrequently assume this shape. Of such we have an example in the case of Errigal, a quartzite mountain in Donegal, nearly 3000 feet high, which bears a very near approach in form to a perfect cone or pyramid, and yet is in no way connected, as regards its origin or structure, with volcanic phenomena.
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