An Unknown Country Author:Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A KOR'-EASTER. (From a Drawing by F. Noel Paton.) PAET III. THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY. Everybody has heard of the Giant's Causeway, but it is strange ho... more »w few out of Ireland, or even in Ireland, have seen it. Probably because it is considered—and perhaps was, till late years—a sort of Ultima Thule of civilization; its nearest links to which, Portrush, Port Stewart, and Bushmills, being, half a century ago, little more than villages. And any one who knows what an Irish village is now, can imagine what these were then. Port Stewart afterwards grew into a small town, and was well abused as such by one young writer, who just passed through it—William Makepeace Thackeray—and as heartily praised by another—Charles Lever—who was for sometime its dispensary doctor, and married there. Meanwhile Portrush became a railway terminus and a genteel watering-place. But little Bushmills remained in statu quo, innocent of tourists, bathers, and sight-seers; known only as the nearest point to the celebrated Giant's Causeway; until an enterprising engineer, Mr. W. A. Traill, conceived the idea of utilizing its river—the Bush—for the water- power of an electric railway; and so opening up the country, with all its wonders. These are, magnificent coast scenery; ruined castles, abbeys, and burial-grounds; cromlechs; Druidical circles; lake-dwellings, and underground caves—treasures dating from prehistoric times, and absolutely priceless to the artist and the archaeologist. But even these learned gentlemen must eat, drink, and sleep, and have a few more comforts than are supposed to be found in an Irish cabin, where the family repose, stretched out like the spokes of a wheel, with their feet towards the turf-fire—of which the smoke goes out by a hole in the roof. A slightly imaginative descr...« less