ed the summit of a rising ground
near the southern frontier of the county of Louth. Beneath lay a valley,
now so rich and so cheerful that the Englishman who gazes on it may
imagine himself to be in one of the most highly favoured parts of his
own highly favoured country. Fields of wheat, woodlands, meadows bright
with daisies and clover, slope gently down to the edge of the Boyne.
That bright and tranquil stream, the boundary of Louth and Meath, having
flowed many miles between verdant banks crowned by modern palaces, and
by the ruined keeps of old Norman barons of the pale, is here about
to mingle with the sea. Five miles to the west of the place from which
William looked down on the river, now stands, on a verdant bank, amidst
noble woods, Slane Castle, the mansion of the Marquess of Conyngham.
Two miles to the east, a cloud of smoke from factories and steam vessels
overhangs the busy town and port of Drogheda. On the Meath side of the
Boyne, the ground, still all corn, grass, flowers, and foliage, rises
with a gentle swell to an eminence surmounted by a conspicuous tuft of
ash trees which overshades the ruined church and desolate graveyard of
Donore, [686]

In the seventeenth century the landscape presented a very different
aspect. The traces of art and industry were few. Scarcely a vessel was
on the river except those rude coracles of wickerwork covered with the
skins of horses, in which the Celtic peasantry fished for trout
and salmon. Drogheda, now peopled by twenty thousand industrious
inhabitants, was a small knot of narrow, crooked and filthy lanes,
encircled by a ditch and a mound. The houses were built of wood with
high gables and projecting upper stories. Without the walls of the town,
scarcely a dwelling was to be seen except at a place called Oldbridge.
At Oldbridge the river was fordable; and on the south of the ford were a
few mud cabins, and a single house built of more solid materials.

When William caught sight of the valley of the Boyne, he could
not suppress an exclamation and a gesture of delight. He had been
apprehensive that the enemy would avoid a decisive action, and would
protract the war till the autumnal rains should return with pestilence
in their train. He was now at ease. It was plain that the contest would
be sharp and short. The pavilion of James was pitched on the eminence
of Donore. The flags of the House of Stuart and of the House of Bourbon
waved together in defiance on the walls