The Giant’s Causeway — Coleraine — Portrush.

The traveller no sooner issues from the inn by a back door, which he is informed will lead him straight to the Causeway than the guides pounces upon him, with a dozen rough boatmen who are likewise lying in wait; and a crew of shrill beggar-boys with boxes of spars, ready to tear him and each other to pieces seemingly, and bawl incessantly round him. “I’m the guide Miss Henry recommends,” shouts one. “I’m Mr Macdonald’s guide,” pushes in another. “This way” roars a third, and drags his prey down a precipice; the rest of them clambering and quarrelling after. I had no friends, I was perfectly helpless. I wanted to walk down to the shore by myself, but they would not let me, and I had nothing for it but to yield myself into the hands of the guide who had seized me, who hurried me down the steep to a little wild bay flanked on each side by rugged cliffs and rocks, against which the waters came tumbling, frothing, and roaring furiously. Upon some of these black rocks two or three boats were lying: four men seized a boat, pushed it shouting into the water, and ravished me into it. We had slid between two rocks, where the channel came gurgling in: we were up one swelling wave that came in a huge advancing body 10 feet above us and were plunging madly down another, (the descent causes a sensation in the lower regions of the stomach which it is not necessary here to describe,) before I had leisure to ask myself why the deuce I was in that boat, with four rowers hurrooing and bounding madly from one huge liquid mountain to another — four rowers whom I was bound to pay. I say, the query came qualmishly across me why the devil I was there, and why not walking calmly on the shore.

The guide began pouring his professional jargon into my ears. “Every one of them bays,” says he, “has a name (take my place and the spray won’t come over you): that is Port Noffer, and the next Port na Gauge; them rocks is the Stookawns (for every rock has its name as well as every bay); and yonder — give way, my boys, — hurray, we’re over it now: has it wet you much, sir? — that’s the little cave: it goes five hundred feet under ground, and the boats goes into it easy of a calm day.”

“Is it a fine day or a rough one now?” said I; the internal disturbance going on with more severity than ever.

“It’s betwixt and between; or, I may say, neither one nor the other. Sit up, sir. Look at the entrance of the cave. Don’t be afraid, sir: never has an accident happened in any one of these boats, and the most delicate ladies has rode in them on rougher days than this. Now, boys, pull to the big cave. That, sir, is 660 yards in length, though some says it goes for miles inland, where the people sleeping in their houses hear the waters roaring under them.”

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