Donegal welcomed some notable scientific travellers in the nineteenth century. They were drawn to the region principally because it was, in the words of one of the era’s most celebrated scientists, Humphry Davy, ‘in many respects peculiar and out of the track of ordinary tourists.’^[1]

These people were attracted by what they saw as the region’s wildness. While mountains and rugged coastlines dominate the length of Ireland’s western seaboard, Donegal was repeatedly portrayed as largely unexplored and uninhabited. In 1826 Charles Ludwig Giesecke, mineralogist at the Dublin Society, referred to the Rosses as a ‘remarkable place for mineralogy’, ‘a beautifully romantic spot’ surrounded by hilly countryside that could only be travelled on horseback.^[2] In a topographical poem, Humphry Davy described Donegal’s mountains as ‘Unalter’d midst the wrecks of time’, an ‘unhaunted solitude’.^[3] Aside from the romantic appeal of such spots, they offered scientific travellers the possibility of making discoveries new to metropolitan science.

As for the islands, these were little-known to all but locals. When Charles Lewis Giesecke travelled to Tory Island in 1826 ‘for the purpose of ascertaining its geological relations’, the passage was so treacherous that he was supplied with three weeks’ worth of provisions in case his planned one-night stay should be extended by a sudden change in the weather.^[4]

The best-publicised of Donegal’s geological curiosities was McSwain’s Gun, a blowhole and sea-cave in the Horn Head peninsula that blows seawater 30 metres into the air. James McParlan, author of a series of Irish county surveys, described it in 1801 as an ‘awfully frightful and curious phenomenon’.^[5]

As concerns for regional economic development grew in the 1820s, so too did institutional and academic support for scientific travel. Donegal was under-industrialised but offered possibilities for development with its geological features, proximity to the major port of Derry, and a selection of good seaports on its long coastline.

Charles Giesecke hoped that his report would contribute to ‘procuring further information […] and of enabling every one interested in the welfare of this country, to examine it fully, and contribute his mite to its improvement.’^[6] He suggested that improvements in infrastructure might increase the sale and use in construction and sculpture of a white marble found at the foot of Errigal, and noted some ‘promising’ mines elsewhere in the county.^[7] James McParlan noted the transportation to Belfast glass manufactories of siliceous sand from Muckish mountain via the harbours of Sheephaven and Dunfanaghy.^[8]

These scientific travellers expressed optimism for the potential for development in Donegal, and for the prospect of co-operation from local landlords. Within twenty years that picture was altered by the Famine and mass emigration and, by the 1880s, the county would become a by-word for rural poverty. 

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^[1] John Davy (ed.), The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy (9 vols, London, 1839–40), vol. vii, p. 146.

^[2] Charles Lewis Giesecke, Account of a Mineralogical Excursion to the County of Donegal (Dublin: Royal Dublin Society, 1826), pp. 9–10.

^[3] Poem by Humphry Davy, printed in John Davy (ed.), Memoirs of the life of Sir Humphry Davy (2 vols, London: Longman and Co., 1836), vol. i, pp. 302–3.

^[4] Giesecke, Account of a Mineralogical Excursion to the County of Donegal, p. 15.

^[5] James McParlan, Statistical Survey of the County of Donegal, with Observations on the Means of Improvement; Drawn up in the Year 1801, for the Consideration, and under the Direction of the Dublin Society (Dublin: Graisberry and Campbell, 1802), p. 11.

^[6] McParlan, Statistical Survey of the County of Donegal, p. ii.

^[7] Giesecke, Account of a Mineralogical Excursion to the County of Donegal, pp. 7–8, 11, 13, 16–17.

^[8] McParlan, Statistical Survey of the County of Donegal, p. 23.