Mr. Sweeney is also the proprietor of the chief “hotel” of Dungloe; our host, Mr. Boyle, being in fact supposed to be “boycotted” for entertaining officers of the police.  This “boycott,” however, has entailed no practical inconvenience upon us; and Mr. Boyle’s pretty and plucky daughters, who manage his house for him, laughed scornfully at the notion of being “bothered” by it.

After luncheon we took a car and drove out to Burtonport, on the Roads of Arranmore, to visit the parish priest there, Father Walker, and Mr. Hammond, the agent of the Conyngham estates.

We passed near a large inland lake, Lough Meela, and the seaward views along the coast were very fine.  With peace and order this corner of Ireland might easily become the chosen site of the most delightful seaside homes in the United Kingdom.  The Recorder of Cork has discovered this, and passes a great part of the year here.  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.  Without being an expert in granites, I have seen enough of the granite works at home to feel quite sure that a moderate and judiciously managed investment here ought to return a handsome result.  If the National League is as well off as it is reputed to be, it might go into this business open a new and remunerative industry to the people of a “congested” district, and earn dividends large enough to enable it to pay the expenses of the war against England at Westminster, without drawing on the savings of the servant-girls in America, The only person likely to suffer would be the “Gombeen man,” if the peasantry earned enough to pay off their debts to him, and stop the flow of interest into his coffers.