The crowds in many places amount to from five hundred to a thousand, and
often to two, three, four, or five thousand people.

These Stations have, for the most part, been placed in situations
remarkable for wild and savage grandeur, or for soft, exquisite, and
generally solitary beauty. They may be found on the high and rugged
mountain top; or sunk in the bottom of some still and lonely glen, far
removed from the ceaseless din of the world. Immediately beside them, or
close in their vicinity, stand the ruins of probably a picturesque
old abbey, or perhaps a modern chapel. The appearance of these gray,
ivy-covered walls is strongly calculated to stir up in the minds of
the people the memory of bygone times, when their religion, with its
imposing solemnities, was the religion of the land. It is for this
reason, probably, that patrons are countenanced; for if there be not
a political object in keeping them up, it is beyond human ingenuity to
conceive how either religion or morals can be improved by debauchery,
drunkenness, and bloodshed.

Let the reader, in order to understand the situation of the place we are
describing, imagine to himself a stupendous cliff overhanging a green
glen, into which tumbles a silver stream down a height of two or three
hundred feet. At the bottom of this rock, a few yards from the basin
formed by the cascade, in a sunless nook, was a well of cool, delicious
water. This was the "Holy Well," out of which issued a slender stream,
that joined the rivulet formed by the cascade. On the shrubs which
grew out of the crag-cliffs around it, might be seen innumerable rags
bleached by the weather out of their original color, small wooden
crosses, locks of human hair, buttons, and other substitutes for
property; poverty allowing the people to offer it only by fictitious
emblems. Lower down in the glen, on the river's bank, was a smooth
green, admirably adapted for the dance, which, notwithstanding the
religious rites, is the heart and soul of a Patron.

On that morning a vast influx of persons, male and female, old and
young, married and single, crowded eagerly towards the well. Among them
might be noticed the blind, the lame, the paralytic, and such as were
afflicted with various other diseases; nor were those good men and their
wives who had no offspring to be omitted. The mendicant, the pilgrim,
the boccagh, together with every other description of impostors,
remarkable for attending such places, were