Traits of Travel - 1829 Author:Thomas Colley Grattan 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: 17 0 FIRE ! NO FIRE! 1 Once happened to be stationed with a small detachment in a secluded village in the south of Ireland ; one of those romantic and wild... more » positions which abound in that country, fit theatres for the display of every feeling that agitates mankind in its half civilized state. The district was disturbed. Nightly outrages, by wretched marauders, whom misery made desperate, kept the scanty gentry and simple peasantry in perpetual alarm, and myself and my party in constant preparation. Sudden attacks on small military posts were frequent, and even daylight was not always a security against the daring attempts of Caravats and Shannvests—the distinctive appellations of the insurgents of those days. The little barrack occupied by me and my detachment .stood on the road side, at the entrance to the village, and was fronted by a thick wood, which stretched along the op- posite hills, and came down in a mass of shadow to the very road. A narrow lane that led into its heart opened upon the road, some twenty yards from the barrack. This outlet was the chief point of suspicion for the wary eye of the sentries, who, day and night, paced bsfore the door; and the frequent report of musket shots from the wood, made the recruits of whom my little" party was chiefly formed, give many a hurried glance and take many a rapid turn, as on their hours of duty they walked close to the neighbourhood of that convenient spot for treachery and ambush. It was one day in October, that I was on the point of sallying out, my gun in hand, and my dog at my heel, to take my usual hour or two of sport in the wood and on its skirts, when a very sudden and heavy shower of rain forced me to pause for awhile at the door, and drove the sentry, a raw, unfledged hero of about seventeen, into his b...« less