across a channel of open
sea. These two armies of islands will lie in ordered ranks, their lines
stretching from northeast to southwest; they will be equal in size, each
two hundred miles along the front, and seventy miles from front to rear.
And the open sea between, which divides the two armies, will measure
seventy miles across.

Not an island of these two armies, as they lie thus obliquely facing
each other, will rise as high as three thousand feet; only the captains
among them will exceed a thousand; nor will there be great variety in
their forms. All the islands, whether north or south, will have gently
rounded backs, clothed in pastures nearly to the crest, with garments of
purple heather lying under the sky upon their ridges. Yet for all this
roundness of outline there will be, towards the Atlantic end of either
army, a growing sternness of aspect, a more sombre ruggedness in the
outline of the hills, with cliffs and steep ravines setting their brows
frowning against the deep.

Hold in mind the image of these two obliquely ranged archipelagoes,
their length thrice their breadth, seaming the blue of the sea, and
garmented in dark green and purple under the sunshine; and, thinking of
them thus, picture to yourself a new rising of the land, a new
withdrawal of the waters, the waves falling and ever falling, till all
the hills come forth again, and the salt tides roll and ripple away from
the valleys, leaving their faces for the winds to dry; let this go on
till the land once more takes its familiar form, and you will easily
call up the visible image of the whole.

As you stand in the midst of the land, where first lay the channel of
open sea, you will have, on your northern horizon, the beginning of a
world of purple-outlined hills, outliers of the northern mountain
region, which covers the upper third of the island. On all sides about
you, from the eastern sea to the western ocean, you will have the great
central plain, dappled with lakes and ribbed with silver rivers, another
third of the island. Then once more, to the south, you will have a
region of hills, the last third of Ireland, in size just equal to the
northern mountains or the central plain.

The lines of the northern hills begin with the basalt buttresses of
Antrim and the granite ribs of Down, and pass through northern Ulster
and Connacht to the headlands of Mayo and Galway. Their rear is held by
the Donegal ranges, keeping guard against the blackn