Friday 15th. Set off to pursue my Journey to Dericlare — winding lakes still accompanied the road sometimes on one side sometimes on the other and sometimes on both. As we passed along I observed several settlements of the protestant Irish who were driven from the North in the disturbances preceding the rebellion.157 The habitation is usually so totally free from any look of comfort that a little more or a little less of the forlorn would hardly be noticed by an English eye.
[p. 134] The fine morning exhibited the details of the Mountains before me which in the preceding evening had been entirely lost. The quantity of naked rock is immense. I have no where except in Burrin seen any hills so bare of vegetation and there the appearance was produced by the upright faces of the strata whose level surfaces were at least matted over with the Dryas octopetala if they had no other vegetation; but here the sloping surface left nothing hid and the hard rock seem [sic] to bid defiance to any decomposition to afford nourishment to plants.
[p. 135] At about 11 o'clock I reached Dericlare where I got a breakfast of cake and sour milk. The good woman of the house makes her bread in a potato kettle & that was occupied by a loaf which she was making for a party of Sportsmen who had pitched their tents on an island in a lake at a little distance; & so desirous was she to procure them a good meal that when the loaf was done she could not get it out of the pot. I had to walk to a small collection of huts called a village about 1 1/2 [miles] off in order to procure a guide acquainted with these mountains. The clouds descended rapidly and I had hardly set off when we were enveloped in a thick drizzle. Under such circumstances I was obliged to give up the ascent but I walked some distance up a valley called Glan Hohy.158 [p. 136] I was told of a silver mine at [the] top of one [of] the mountains the silver of which splits into thin flakes — undoubtedly mica. Wet and hungry I returned to Dericlare where I got some Salmon & Potatoes and a clean bed tho it must be confessed not a very magnificent apartment.