Our clothes were dried during the night, and with a new steed we started for Sligo. It was clear weather and we had a pleasant ride along the coast-line. The feature of the day was skirting the base of Benbulbin for about seven miles. This is a most peculiar mountain, almost eighteen hundred feet high. Its base starts in with patches of yellow and sage-green verdure, then turns to streams of broken rocks. From these, regular pillars of stone start like the pipes of an organ, which can be seen for fifty miles, these again being covered by a flat crown of green growth. The whole looks like a vast temple in India. A large water-fall, consisting of three separate cascades, cuts its side and adds greatly to its beauty and attractiveness.
We passed through the village of Drumcliff, situated on the bank of the river of the same name which here enters Drumcliff Bay from Glencar Lake. A monastery was founded here by St. Columba, the site for which was given in 575, and it was made into a bishop's see, afterwards united to Elphin. This village was anciently called "Drumcliff of the Crosses," and of the remains of these the "Great Cross" is a fine example. It is thirteen feet high and three feet eight inches across the arms, which are connected by the usual circular segments. It is of hard sandstone and consists of three sections, the base, shaft, and top. It is highly sculptured, showing human figures, animals, and fine, interlaced scrollwork. There is also the stump of a round tower, about forty feet high, of rude masonry of the earliest group. The door is square-headed, six feet from the ground, and the walls are three feet thick.
[Illustration: GOING TO THE BOG FOR TURF, BUNDORAN, COUNTY DONEGAL]
Near Drumcliff was fought a great battle in 561, arising out of a quarrel over the possession of a copy of a Latin Psalter made by St. Columba from one borrowed of St. Finnian, of Moville. St. Finnian claimed the copy, and the case was brought before Dermot, King of Meath, who decided, Brehon fashion, that as "to every cow belongs its calf, so to every book belongs its copy," a judgment from which St. Columba appealed to his tribe. The party of St. Columba was victorious, three thousand of the men of Meath being slain. St. Columba was advised by St. Molaise to go to Scotland and convert the pagans as penance for the blood he had shed, which he did, and founded a missionary establishment in Iona.