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LEINSTER 39
macanoge a road runs up the Rocky Valley, sweep-
ing round Great Sugarloaf, and it instantly brings you
into wildness: in half an hour's going you will be
round the mountain and out on the bleak levels of
Calary Bog, with the soft gradual side of Douse
tempting you to run up to the top—an easy victory.
Yield to that temptation, and, unless your way is
picked knowingly, you will be floundering in heather
shoulder high, ashamed to turn back and almost too
tired to go on. Still, to go on is worth it. Once on
the top of Douse you are in the heart of real Wicklow
—and you see, far below you, the road winding which
leads out through Sallygap, west of Kippure Mountain
to Kildare and the plains.
But supposing that at Kilmacanoge you do what
forty thousand other people will have done that year
before you, and hold straight on between the Sugar-
loaves, the road, curving gradually eastward and sea-
ward, brings you into the Glen of the Downs, another
noble defile, wooded to the very crest with scrubby
timber, so close as to be almost impassable—lovely
as the loveliest in its way. Yet somehow the little
gazebo of an octagonal summerhouse set high up on
the north side in Bellevue grounds stamps the scene.
It is nature, but nature decked and laid out and
caressed and petted by man. A little farther and
the road brings you into Delgany, at the foot of