my kind and careful coast-guard attendant, who guided my quiet pony along this Alpine road, was anxious to spare me an alarm I did not feel; and moralising upon the subject, said—" We are in as much danger as that every day of our lives : 'tis nothing but a thread that keeps us from the land of forgetfulness." Above the little sequestered cove of Keem, to which this road descends, and where it terminates, are two little whitewashed cottages, hanging one above the other on the brink of a torrent, which, after rushing under the pointed arch of a picturesque bridge, loses itself in the absorbing sands, and is scarcely to be tracked to the sea. The torrent threatens in winter to tear away the foundations of the two cottages, which are, besides, not weather tight; yet they are the residence of two coast-guard boatmen and their families ;...

Keem is a terrestrial paradise. The road that leads to it carries us over a high cliff which, in its sheer descent to the level of the sea, shows a regularity that almost suggests architectural design. In front, as one advances, one gets a view of the rich pastures of Keem, the coastguard station (four of which until quite recently had been fully manned in this island, the sole usefulness of which seems to have been to prevent the poor islanders from taking hold of any present the winds or the waves made them)...

Keem, I said, was a singular village; it is only inhabited in summer—who would suppose that the Achillians had such a superfluity of houses, that they had both their winter and summer residences. The Greenlanders and Esquimaux are so changeful, from their excessive vicissitudes of heat and cold— but here I was surprised to find empty every house but two, (and these were the residences of the coast-guard, all with their doors fastened and untenanted; and certainly such miserable wigwams, I had never before seen—all built, as I have already described, without gable-ends. It seems the owners of the village of Keem, and the renters of the adjoining district, have other houses in a distant part of the island, where they spend the winter and spring; thence they come when their oats and potatoes are planted and spend the summer months, herding their cattle on these heights, and leading a pastoral life. Thus in Switzerland they have their chalets on the hills, and in old_times in Ireland the creaghts (as they ,were called) had their boolies on the mountains; but I don't think I ever saw a summer-herding Village before.
I said that two of the coast-guard lived here, and what a lonely life they must lead in winter, in this extreme western end of Achill, when the villagers go home leaving them entirely by themselves.