I had not proceeded twenty miles before I came to a village surrounded by troops, and guarded at the ends of its few streets by loaded cannon, with lighted matches smoking by their sides.
A considerable encampment was formed on a slightly rising eminence near the village; and on the neighbouring ground, still farther off, might be seen large irregular groups of people, who, I learned, upon inquiry, were chiefly Orangemen, preparing for a grand ceremonial procession on this the 12th of July, the well-known anniversary of the battle of the Boyne.

In order to resist this proceeding on the part of the Protestants, an immense multitude on the Roman Catholic side of the question were likewise assembled, and all the roads converging towards that quarter were lined with parties of men carrying sticks in their hands, flocking to the expected scene of action.

The military had been called in to keep the peace, but the angry passions of the respective factions were so much roused, that even the precautions above described seemed hardly sufficient to prevent the threatened conflict.
As a matter of curiosity, I could have no great objection to seeing another such battle as the one I had witnessed near Corunna between those long-established fighting-cocks, the French and English; but to look on while honest Pat and Tim were breaking one another's heads upon abstract political grounds, and English soldiery interposing with grapeshot and fixed bayonets to make them friends again, was what I had no mind for.

I tried, therefore, to extricate myself forthwith from this unhappy struggle; but my horse being tired, I was forced to sleep in a village which, for aught I knew, might be sacked and burned before morning; nothing occurred, however: nevertheless, I felt far from easy till out of reach of the furious factions; the strangest thing of all being that some quiet folks, a few miles distant, with whom I took breakfast, seemed scarcely to mind it, although the country round them was all on fire.

From thence the course lay across a wild range of mountains, one of them having on its top a sheet of fresh water called Loch Salt.