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Giant's Causeway

"The guide led us down a slippery and stony road, cut in the side of the hill which concealed the Causeway from our view, and, rounding the shoulder of it, we descended to a small mound, from which we got our first view of The Causeway. We were at too great a distance to distinguish any peculiarity in the view, except the lines of the basaltic pillars indistinctly marking the face of the cliff, and we were naturally disappointed with the first glance; but as we descended to the shore, and approached nearer around the bend of the bay, it seemed to us that the ruins of some templed and gigantic city, that had been hurled from the sky, were heaped up before us in a mountain of confused architecture. The Giant's Causeway, indeed, resembles nothing so much as a mountain of hewn stones—frusta of noble columns—remnants of vast porticoes, cast down from a height into the sea."

From The Scenery and Antiquities of Ireland, by J. Stirling Coyne and N. P. Willis, illustrated by W. H. Bartlett, circa 1850.

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