Returning to the Bay of Galway, we shall now proceed to the west coast of Ireland. Galway Bay is very capaci ous, being six leagues wide and seven deep ; before it lie the South Arran islands, among which there are no fewer than four passages ; these belong to the county of Clare ; there are various shoals,sands, and sunken rocks, especially on the north side. When the wind blows from'the south and south-west, a heavy swell rolls into the bay of Galway. The coast to the north of this bay is lined with many rocks and small islets, and possesses several small bays, one of the principal of which is Butterby Bay ; this has a narrow entrance, but within is four miles long, and two broad, with deep water. Conichio bay is deep at the mouth, but the entrance is diffi cult and dangerous ; the other bays require no particular notice. The west point of Galway is Sline-head, which is rocky and steep. To the nor th of this head are many bays, but the coast in general is lined with rocks and shoals. The counties of. Galway and Mayo are separated by Killery bar boor. The county of Mayo has a long extent of coast, fronting directly towards the north, in which there are ma ny coves and bays. Before Newport Bay, which is four leagues long, with many islands, and has se veral good roads for the largest vessels, lies Clare Island. The entrance to the Bay of Blacksod is four miles long ; this bay is formed by the island of Achil on the south, and affords a landlock ed harbour. The coast, in this quarter, is studded with islets, of which the most conspicuous are those called the Stags of Broadhaven ; after passing these, the coast be comes clear of islets, with steep rocky cliffs. Killala Bay contracts into a harbour which admits small vessels. Sligo Bay is capacious, and has several good harbours and road steads. Three leagues west from Ballyshannon, off the coast of Sligo, lies a small island called Ennis Murry, at the south end of which is a large rock above w..tee, with a ledge running for a great distance from it into the sea ; so that, to the south-west, the coast is foul as far as Rala point.
The coast of Donegal is mountainous and dreary. Done gal Bay is six leagues wide and seven deep, and contains many harbours. On the north shore of this bay another stretches into the land, called Inver Bay. From the bay of Donegal, the coast is lined with islands, one group of which is called the Rosses; the largest of this group is the island of Arranmore, nine miles in circumference, and one mile from the main land. Sheephaven is spacious, but exposed to the north and north-cast : near it is Horn Head ; in this promontory there is a remarkable cavern, with an opening to the land, through which the waves force up a column of water, with a noise that is said to be heard 30 miles. Tl,ere are some black rocks, called Ensterhull, over against Enis thon, the extremity of which, Caledagh Point, is the north cape of Ireland. To the west-south-west lies Lough Swil ly, which is thought to be the ?Ingita of Ptolemy : it is one of the noblest harbours in Europe, being 20 miles long, and nearly two deep, with 'good anchorage and deep water, so that a large fleet might lie there with ease and safety. As, however, there is scarcely even a village on its shores, it is:little frequented, except occasionally by vessels for shelter.
-The first object of importance, in tracing the coast of Londonderry, is Lough Foyle, or Foole. Into this loch runs the river Dcrg, and its tributary streams. Lough Foyle is an Immense oval basin, 18 miles long and eight broad. Be tween Magilions and Green Castle, where it opens into the ocean, it is not above a mile and a half wide, with eight and ten fathoms depth of water. Before this entrance, there is a large sand called the Tunns, on which the sea sometimes beats with a prodigious noise and violence ; the channel between this sand and the main is broad, and at all times 14 or fifteen fathoms depth of water. On the east
side of the lough there are also shoals, or banks of sand, and some smaller ones on the west ; but the two channels between them are wide, and generally four fathoms deep ; at the 'entrance of the river, the water is ten or twelve fathoms ; so that, upon the whole, Lough Foyle is a very safe, capacious, and commodious haven, for the larg est fleets.
We shall subjoin to this description of the coasts of Ire land, the following Table of the principal geographical po sitions on them.
The effects of such an immense volume of waters as the Atlantic Ocean, acted on, as they often are, by violent westerly winds, upon the west coast of Ireland, in render ing it more angled and indented than any of its other coasts, have already been noticed. But it may be proper also to notice in this place, other effects of the winds on the coasts of Ireland ; we allude to the immense accumulation of sand which they have forced up, by which, in many places, the land, and even villages, have been overwhelm ed. The following instances in point are drawn from a memoir on the climate of Ireland, by the Rev. Wil liam Hamilton, published in the 6th volume of the Irish Transactions.
" The effects of the winds," he observes, " are particu larly distinguishable in the northern province of Ulster; but they are by no means confined to this coast, being strikingly observable even on the east coast. At the en trance of the river Bannow, in the celebrated barony of Forth, in the county of Wexford, vestiges of ruins, traced with difficulty amidst the heaps of barren sands, serve to ascertain the site of a town," which derived its name from the river on which it stood. The town of Bannow had the privilege of sending representatives to Parliament ; and so late as the year 1626, it is registered in the custom house books of Wexford as having four streets which paid quitrent to the crown. The only remains visible in 1786 were the walls of the church ; there is not, on or near the site of the tom n, but one poor solitary hut. Amid the sands between Portrush and Dunluce in the county of Antrim, in the year 1783, the ruins of a village might be seen, desert ed by its inhabitants. In the year 1787. the peninsula of Hornhead, in the county of Donegal, contained vestiges of enclosures, so small and so numerous as to mark the resi dence of a considerable number of families ; but then it was quite a desert. Rather more than a century ago, the peninsula of Rosgull, which lies between the harbours of Sheephaven and Mulroy in the county of Donegal, was se lected as the residence of one of the noble families of Ha milton ; at present the gardens are totally stript of trees and shrubbery by the fury of the western winds; the limits of the courts, the flights of steps, and the terraces, can scarce ly be traced amidst the heaps of sand which overwhelm them. Tile mansion itself was, when described by Dr. Hamilton, fast approaching to destruction, the lower apart ments being already filled with sand, which was beginning to rise above the thresholds ; it is said that 1200 acres of land were also buried, in a short time, in irrecoverable ruin. Dr. Hamilton mentions two other striking instances of the encroachment of the sand on the coast of Donegal ; one of a house which had not been long built when he saw it, the roof of which was just emerging from the sand ; the owner told him that the house had at first a considerable tract of pasture ground between it and the sea shore, but that lat terly he was obliged every year .to dig it out of the en croaching sands. Thirty or forty years before Dr. Hamil ton wrote, there was a forge in a village of Favet on the northern coast of Donegal, but then there were no vesti ges of it, except some stones in the midst of loose and shift ing sands.