I Like People To Claim Kindred With Me; I Like A Hearty Welcome, The _Cead Mille Faille Ghud_, That Takes You Out Of Hotel Life And Makes You Feel At Home.

I was so welcomed by my distant kinsman and his excellent wife that I felt very reluctant to turn out again to hotel life.

Next day after my arrival we got a car and made an excursion down along the coast to Port-a-dorus. I thought I had seen rocks before, but these rocks are a new variety to me. They occur so suddenly that they are a continual surprise. Along the coast, out in the water, they push up their backs in isolated heaps like immense hippopotami lying in the water, or petrified sharks with only a tall serrated back fin visible. There would occur a strip of bare brown sand, and outside of that row upon row of sharp, thin, jagged rocks like the jaw teeth of pre-Adamite monsters. In other places they were piled on one another in such a sudden way, grass growing in the crevices, ivy creeping over them, the likeness of broken towers and ruined battlements, that one could hardly believe but that they were piled there by some giant race.

When we had driven as far as the car could go we left car and driver, and scrambled over the rocks like goats. Rocks frowned above us, between us and the sky, rocks all round in black confusion. As we climbed from slippery rock to slippery rock, over long leathery coils of thick sea weed, like serpents, on, on through the _Dorus_ to the open sea, noticing the dark passages, the gloomy caves, the recesses among the cliffs, the narrow passes, where one could turn to bay and keep off many, it was natural to think of rebels skulking here, with a price on their heads, after the '98, or of lawless people stilling illicit _poteen_ to hide it from the gaugers. Sheltered by the rocks of Port-a-dorus, I could enjoy the sea air flavored with essence of sea weed. We watched for a while the waves playing about the rocks and washing through the door in innocent gambols. This sportfulness did not impose upon me nor the rocks either, for the marks of the Atlantic in a rage were graven on their brows in baldness and in wrinkles.

Along the road as we drove back I noticed the white cottages of coast guardsmen who have married the maidens of the hills. They were there in their patches of ground, delving with the spade, scattering sea weed manure, the landlords here allowing them to gather all the sea weed that drifts to their shores. Decent looking men these, in their blue uniforms and thoughtful sea-beaten faces, with hardy little children around them, playing or helping. The rocks rise among the fields with the same startling abruptness as they do along the shore, looking still more like ruins of old castles.

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