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considerably, and by excluding foreign objects renders the scenery more romantic. The spectator descends by a circuitous path. Towards the sea the glen continues pretty, but the wood of the southern side soon disappears. The bottom was too rugged, and the sides were too steep to permit my intended ramble through it. Being obliged to leave it, I walked on the top of the bank, and when, on the first opportunity, I again descended, found its beauty much diminished. Above the fall is a mill, and above this, where the vale opens, are a few cottages, prettily situated, with trees about them.

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CHAPTER XII.

From Peel to Kirk Michael.

PEEL is ten or twelve miles distant from Douglas. This town is chiefly remarkable for the ruins of its castle and cathedral. It is supposed to contain twelve hundred people. Since the loss of the smuggling trade it has been a place of little commerce. Provisions are cheap, and fish plentiful. The church in the town is dedicated to St. Peter.

Peel castle stands on a small rocky island, about a hundred yards west of the town; being separated from it by a channel, scarcely a foot deep at low water. The island is sometimes called Holme Peel. It is joined to the main land, southward of Peel river, by a strong stone wall, shelving to the top, built many years ago to secure the harbour. The entrance to this island is on the eastern side. There was formerly a flight of stone steps to the water's edge; but these are too nearly demolished to be of any use to the traveller, who is now obliged to clamber

over the rocks. Turning to the left, he ascends several steps to the gateway in the side of a square tower of the castle, through which he enters. Immediately to the right is a vaulted guard-room.

The walls are flanked with towers, and enclose an irregular polygon whose area contains about two acres. The average thickness of them does not exceed three or four feet. They are built of clay-slate little hewn, and are coigned and faced in many parts with red sand-stone. The time of their erection is unknown. Here are the ruins of two churches; one dedicated to St. Patrick, supposed to be of great antiquity; the other to St. Germain, being the cathedral of the island, and built about the year 1245. The whole area is full of ruins of various buildings, walls, and dwelling houses. About the middle of it is a square pyramidal mound of earth, terminating obtusely. Each of its sides faces one of the cardinal points of the compass, and measures about seventeen yards. It is surrounded by a ditch, five feet and a half broad. Time and weather have rounded off its angles. It is supposed to have been an eminence whence an officer might harangue his troops, or the burial

place of some great personage; and the natives imagine that much treasure lies hidden under it.

Before the British government purchased the royalty of the island, this fortress was garrisoned by troops kept in pay by the Lord of Man. At the time of the sale, were removed from the remains of the armoury many matchlock muskets and other ancient arms.

St. Germain's is described by Waldron as being richly ornamented, and abounding in monumental inscriptions. At present, however, there is not in it a single piece of carved stone, and scarcely a vestige of any ancient funeral memorandum. The whole building is extremely ruinous, and has not for many years been used for any other purpose than a burying-place. Its dimensions are seventy six feet by twenty. Beneath the eastern part of it is the ecclesiastical prison, or dungeon, for those persons who were so miserable as to incur the spiritual censure. The descent is by eighteen steps of about ten inches each, a good deal broken, winding through a dark passage. The dimensions of the vault are thirty four feet by sixteen. The bottom is of earth; and at one corner are the remains of

a well, uncovered, which must have added greatly to the dampness of the place. The only light or air is admitted through a small hole in the wall.

St. Patrick's church stands a little to the westward of St. Germain's; all the buildings here being of the same material. Its windows have been circular. Nothing but the walls remain. Waldron mentions subterranean cells under the churches, respecting which I could not obtain information from an old woman, my guide, any except the report that there were such. He describes them thus: "Some of them have nothing in them to sit or lie down upon; others, a small piece of brick-work; some of them are lower and more dark than others, but all of them, in my opinion, dreadful enough for any crime humanity can be guilty of; though it is supposed they were built with different degrees of horror, that the punishments might be proportionate to the faults of the wretched prisoners. They have not been made use of since the times of popery."

The castle is said to be haunted by several apparitions, among which is that of Eleanor, wife to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, uncle

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