CHAPTER I. A FIRST ANNIVERSARY
“Although you open force disdain.
Of secret guile beware!”
John Leyden.
It was a cold frosty evening in December, seventeen hundred and ninety-five, and the whole of the month had been unusually tempestuous. Throughout wide Britain, there are no shores on which the wind rages with wilder fury than upon those naked promontories which abut into the Atlantic, along the iron-bound coast of Donegal. Harbours are few and far between—the peasantry are a hardy and adventurous race—and the fishing grounds distant from the land. In the winter, snowstorms come suddenly on, and the sea rises with fearful rapidity. The boatmen are caught in the gale, and too frequently courage and skill struggle in vain,
“Contending with the fretful elements;”