This Donegal coast is no further from the great centres of British wealth and population than are Mount Desert and the other summer resorts of Maine and New Hampshire from New York and Philadelphia; and the islands which break the great roll of the Atlantic here cannot well be more nearly in "a state of nature" than were the Isles of Shoals, for example, in my college days, long after Mr.Lowell first wandered there with the transcendental Thaxters to celebrate the thunders of the surf at Appledore.
The wonderful granitic formations we had seen on the way from Gweedore stretch all along the coast to the Roads of Arranmore.

At Burtonport they lie on the very water's edge.

At a place called Lickeena, masses of beautiful salmon-and rose-coloured granite actually trend into the tidewater, and at Burtonport proper is a promontory of that richly-mottled granite which I had supposed to be the peculiar heritage of Peterhead, and which is now largely exported from Scotland to the United States.

Why should not this Irish granite be shipped directly from Donegal to America, there to be built up into cathedrals, and shaped into monuments for the Exiles of Erin?
All these formations which we have seen present themselves in great cubical blocks, so jointed that they may be detached without blasting, with great comparative ease, and with little of the waste which results from the squaring of shapeless masses.

At the same time, as we saw while coming from Gweedore, the many lakes of this region offer all the water-power necessary for polishing-works, columnar lathes, and the general machinery used in developing such quarries.