tely
procured, by a man who had no fears, to bring the guide across; but the
latter was so terrified that he made himself drunk ere he attempted the
dangerous passage. As he was essential to me in consequence of the
arrangements made about my luggage, I endeavoured to rouse him. He
staggered on for several miles, but seemed utterly unconscious where he
was going. When I found him incapable of directing me, I endeavoured to
procure some food for him, and with that view proceeded to a mountain
hut, but before I reached it, he sank down utterly exhausted and
powerless. He was unable even to articulate the name of the man to whose
house he was directed to take me, or the locality where he lived. It was
only from circumstances and a dim recollection of the name that I was
able to apprise the owner of the cabin whither I was bound; and after
all, much remained for the exercise of his sagacity, which was not long
at fault. We brought my old guide to the cabin, thrown across a pony,
and I set out anew, guided by the dweller on the hills. He forced me to
mount the pony, and led the way over the crags. He bounded from rock to
rock with the agility of a deer, though the stones were sharp as flint,
and he barefooted. He was a man of powerful proportions and extreme
activity. My pony, on the other hand, crept his way through narrow
pathways, worn by the rain. In this way we crossed two considerable
mountains, and, leaving the pony at the summit of the last, I pursued my
companion's flight down the slope with the best speed my stiffened limbs
could be forced to. Arriving over a valley which is called, I think,
Branlieu, situated in a western direction from Gougane Barra, he pointed
to a lone house at the extremity of the valley, as my destination. It
was about four o'clock, but the rays of the sun had ceased to irradiate
this gloomy valley, over which hung the shades of night. At the western
side the mountain was steep as a wall, and down from the summit dashed
headlong torrents, swelled by the morning's rain. The waters gleamed
like sheeted ice through the haze, and their roar fell upon the ear with
a dull sense of loneliness and pain. On the eastern slope wound a new
road, one of those heartless experiments which the inventive genius of
the Board of Works in Ireland substituted for the exploded trial of
prolonging beggars' lives by Soyer soup and chained spoons. On these
roads the people were to perform the greatest possible amount o