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.