Here the country people, it seems, halt and wash their feet before entering Letterkenny, failing which ceremony they may expect a quarrel with somebody before they get back to their homes.

This wholesome superstition doubtless was established ages ago by some good priest, when priests thought it their duty to be the preachers and makers of peace.
We soon left the wooded country of the Swilly and began to climb into the grand and melancholy Highlands of Donegal.

The road was as fine as any in the Scottish Highlands, and despite the keen chill wind, the glorious and ever-changing panoramas of mountain and strath through which we drove were a constant delight, until, just as we came within full range of Muckish, the giant of Donegal, the weather finally broke down into driving mists and blinding rain.
We pulled up near a picturesque little shebeen, to water the horses and get our Highland wraps well about us.

Out came a hardy, cheery old farmer.

He swept the heavens with the eye of a mountaineer, and exclaimed:--"Ah! it's a coorse day intirely, it is." "A coorse day intirely" from that moment it continued to be.
Happily the curtain had not fallen before we caught a grand passing glimpse of the romantic gorge of Glen Veagh, closed and commanded in the shadowy distance by the modern castle of Glenveagh, the mountain home of my charming country-woman, Mrs.Adair.
Thanks to its irregular serpentine outline, and to the desolate majesty of the hills which environ it, Lough Veagh, though not a large sheet of water, may well be what it is reputed to be, a rival of the finest lochs in Scotland.