In the morning when we arose it was raining, with little prospect of fair weather, but having expected nothing better, we set out on foot for the Causeway.  The rain, however, soon came down in torrents, and we were obliged to take shelter in a cabin by the road-side.  The whole house consisted of one room, with bare walls and roof, and earthen floor, while a window of three or four panes supplied the light.  A fire of peat was burning on the hearth, and their breakfast, of potatoes alone, stood on the table.  The occupants received us with rude but genuine hospitality, giving us the only seats in the room to sit upon; except a rickety bedstead that stood in one corner and a small table, there was no other furniture in the house.  The man appeared rather intelligent, and although he complained of the hardness of their lot, had no sympathy with O’Connell or the Repeal movement.

We left this miserable hut, as soon as it ceased raining—­and, though there were many cabins along the road, few were better than this.  At length, after passing the walls of an old church, in the midst of older tombs, we saw the roofless towers of Dunluce Castle, on the sea-shore.  It stands on an isolated rook, rising perpendicularly two hundred feet above the sea, and connected with the cliffs of the mainland by a narrow arch of masonry.  On the summit of the cliffs were the remains of the buildings where the ancient lords kept their vassals.  An old man, who takes care of it for Lord Antrim, on whose property it is situated, showed us the way down to the castle.  We walked across the narrow arch, entered the ruined hall, and looked down on the roaring sea below.  It still rained, the wind swept furiously through the decaying arches of the banqueting hall and waved the long grass on the desolate battlements.  Far below, the sea foamed white on the breakers and sent up an unceasing boom.  It was the most mournful and desolate picture I ever beheld.  There were some low dungeons yet entire, and rude stairways, where, by stooping down, I could ascend nearly to the top of one of the towers, and look out on the wild scenery of the coast.

Going back, I found a way down the cliff, to the mouth of a cavern in the rock, which extends under the whole castle to the sea.  Sliding down a heap of sand and stones, I stood under an arch eighty feet high; in front the breakers dashed into the entrance, flinging the spray half-way to the roof, while the sound rang up through the arches like thunder.  It seemed to me the haunt of the old Norsemen’s sea-gods!

We left the road near Dunluce and walked along the smooth beach to the cliffs that surround the Causeway.  Here we obtained a guide, and descended to one of the caves which can be entered from the shore.  Opposite the entrance a bare rock called Sea Gull Isle, rises out of the sea like a church steeple.  The roof at first was low, but we shortly came to a branch that opened on the sea, where the arch was forty-six feet in height.  The breakers dashed far into the cave, and flocks of sea-birds circled round its mouth.  The sound of a gun was like a deafening peal of thunder, crashing from arch to arch till it rolled out of the cavern.