On the morning after my entering Belfast I was presented by Dr. Macdonnell to a lady who he said had been very solicitous for my return; and I soon found that she was Mrs. Hughes, the daughter of Sir Edward Newenham, and sister to Madame Folsch of Marseilles, in whose society I had passed so many pleasant hours during my residence in the South of France. Mrs. Hughes had done me the honour of reading and liking my Narrative of my Residence in France; and learning from it how much I was then acquainted with her sister, when she heard I had been and was to be again at Belfast, became anxious to see me, and talk with me about the family. She was living with her only daughter, who is married to Mr. Kennedy, a gentleman of fortune having a very pretty seat at Hollywood on the edge of Belfast Lough, upon the Downshire side, about four miles from the town. Thither she would fain have carried me to stay some days, but I could spare no more time than to spend that day with her and return the next. Though nearly ten years had then elapsed since my quitting France, it was so much longer since she had seen her sister, that she said my intelligence seemed comparatively recent, and it was quite a treat to question me about her.
Mr. Kennedy has a nice little schooner, in which he took me a very pleasant sail about the Lough before dinner. The water was high, the day was particularly fine, and nothing could be more beautiful than the scenery every way. A sort of stone here presents itself very different from any thing I had found on the other side of the bay; — a yellow magnesian-limestone. It abounds much
On the twenty-seventh of August, the last day before my finally quitting Belfast, I went over to Lisburn to see Mr. Coulson's manufactory of damask table linen,
On the morning after my entering Belfast I was presented by Dr. Macdonnell furnishing me with a recommendation, as it is never shown without one. It is, indeed, a most beautiful manufacture, and well worth seeing, though the machinery of the vast looms in which it is wove, is so complicated that it is not at all to be understood by merely looking on at the people as they are working. The linen manufactured here is in no way inferior to the foreign manufactures.
I went to Lisburn by a road on the different side of the river Lagan from that by which I had come to Belfast, and stopped by the way to see two objects very near the road. One was a curious place called the Giants' Ring. It is a very large circle inclosed round with a high bank of earth not wrought up to a point, but having a walk along the top. In the centre of this ring is a Cromlech, consisting of four large masses of stone, not all of equal height, standing perpendicular, with a much larger laid horizontally upon them; but from the height of the supports being unequal, it is not perfectly level like a table, but lies in an inclined position. Upon the bank are the remains of, a round-tower, of which not more than perhaps fifteen feet from the ground remain standing. It is strange, but this spot seems scarcely an object of attention to any one, though it ought in my opinion to be a very interesting one to the researchers into the antiquities of the country. Its existence even is not much known at Belfast, though it is not more than four or five miles from the town. I had heard of it by chance; but when I asked about it of the master of the hotel, he said he knew of no such place, I must have made some mistake. I was perfectly assured, however, that I had made no mistake, that such a thing did exist; and when I asked Dr. Macdonnell about it, he could tell me in what direction it lay, but even he had never seen it, nor was at all aware that there were remains of a round-tower as well as the cromlech. The existence of a round-tower on a spot manifestly a remnant of Druidical superstition, seems strongly to support the idea that these extraordinary structures were connected
The second object which I turned aside to see in my way to Lisburn was part of another round-tower in the church-yard of Drumbo, and called in the country Drumbo steeple. This is a very imperfect one; not more of it remains than perhaps between thirty and forty feet in height. I have not found either of these mentioned any where as among the number of these structures still in existence whether wholly or partially. The Post-Chaise Companion, in general a very excellent guide about the country, does not notice them, nor indeed does it mention the Giants' Ring.
On the 28th of August I finally took my leave of Belfast; — of the civilities I received there I shall ever retain a grateful recollection. Instead of returning to Dublin by the way I had come, I determined on making a little circuit to see the beautiful Bay of Carlingford, and the scenery around it. In this route, no object particularly worthy of notice presented itself on the first day's journey till the ruins of Dundrum-castle. They are boldly situated on a high rock, very near the little bay of the same name. The castle was originally a strong fortress, and belonged to the Knights Templars, after which it was transferred to the Prior of Down, from whose hands it passed early in the sixteenth century into the hands of the crown: after various fates it was dismantled by order of Cromwell, and has ever since been falling more and more to decay.
Newcastle, a small village directly on the sea-shore, and at the foot of Slieve Donard, the loftiest of the Mourne mountains, was the place on which I had fixed for my night quarters. Here again I was in some danger of being obliged to bivouac out in the air upon my car. Not that there was either fair or races to interfere with my having a bed; but poor as the village is, it is the principal sea-bathing place in the county of Down, and during the bathing season it is
Slieve Donard is here a majestic object, rising somewhat more than three thousand feet above the level of the sea, which washes its base. The structure of this mountain is singular, being granite with a buttress, as it were, of slate on one side. I cannot give this as the result of my own examination, for I had neither the time nor means to ascertain it; but I was thus informed by Mr. Ryan the miner whom I had seen at Belfast, by whom it had been explored. He also mentioned another curious circumstance respecting the mountainous regions of the county of Down; that on the summit of the slate mountains which rise above the Bay of Carlingford, and which are at some distance from the granite mountains of Mourne, there lies a vast solitary bolder of granite. I found small blocks of granite and schist promiscuously in a little channel down the side of the mountain which was then dry, but which is occasionally a waterfall; and going along the foot of the mountain the next day, from a part of the rock by the road side I got pieces of striated slate.
From Newcastle to Kilkeele, where I breakfasted the next day, a distance of ten miles, the road lies entirely at the base of the Mourne mountains, on a terrace at no great height above the sea. In clear weather the Isle of Man is seen very plain for a considerable way in going along this road: unfortunately it happened to be as foggy a morning as could annoy a traveller, and I could sometimes even scarcely distinguish the sea washing the base of the terrace.
The road continues to skirt the long range of the Downshire mountains the whole way to Rostrevor on the Bay of Carlingford. Few spots are more beautiful than the little village of Rostrevor, and the scenery about it. After having continued coasting naked and barren mountains for fifteen or sixteen miles, all on a sudden the eye is delighted with the sight of a very high slope wooded all over from the very summit to the water's edge. The road continues still upon a terrace above the water, and goes directly through this wood. At the end of it Rostrevor-quay, as it is called, nearly a mile from the village, opens; it is a row of houses at the foot of the wooded hill, with the bay in front; and here the entrance to the bay and the main sea being entirely shut out from the view, it has all the appearance of lake scenery. After passing the quay the road is again carried amid woods up to the village; one of the prettiest villages, surrounded by some of the prettiest scenery, that can be imagined. Nor is it wholly destitute of grand features; behind the village the mountains rise to a pretty considerable height, and they are also lofty on the other side of the bay. I would earnestly recommend to every body going into the North of Ireland, instead of following the common high road to Belfast, to turn off at Newry and see Rostrevor; he will be amply repaid by the beauty of the spot for going a little out of the way, and perhaps it does not add more than ten or twelve miles to the distance. A better way I think than I came, and certainly a nearer, is to strike directly from Rostrevor into the road to Castle-Willan, not to follow the coast. I found nothing very interesting in this coast road, and it lengthens the way very much.
From Rostrevor I proceeded along the northern shore of the bay to a place called Narrow-Water, where the bay is contracted into a river, and where there is a ferry. Crossing here I went on to the town of Carlingford, which is almost at the entrance of the bay on the south side. This is a very old town, full of ruins of ancient castles and monasteries. One of the castles is called King John's Castle, and is reputed to have been built in the time of that sovereign.
But it was not these remnants of antiquity which attracted me to Carlingford; my principal object was to explore an immense quarry of gray limestone about a quarter of a mile from the town. And, indeed, I found here many very interesting objects of mineralogical research. This quarry lies at the foot of a high mountain, and from various appearances there is sufficient reason to believe that the upper part of the mountain has a tendency to being basaltic; in the quarry itself are two strata, which differ essentially from the limestone, which are not fusible, and are accordingly thrown aside by the workmen; by them this is called greenstone, and it certainly has a strong basaltic tendency. I had been told that the mine was not only intersected horizontally by strata of this stone, but that it was also cut by them vertically; this, however, I could not find to be the case. What confirms the basaltic nature of this stone is, that whereas the limestone abounds with traces, casts, and impressions of numerous shells and zoophytes, we may almost say is crowded with them, no organic remains are ever found in these strata. The limestone also abounds with very brilliant flattened crystallizations of iron pyrites. The zoophytes are of infinitely larger dimensions than common, and exhibit numerous transverse partitions which are covered with a minute crystallization, sometimes of calcareous and sometimes of siliceous matter. The casts of one species of shell, the genus of which does not yet appear to have been determined, but having much the character of a Nautilus, were so extremely abundant, that in the course of the evening while I was sitting at the inn, several parcels of twenty or thirty each were brought by the men and boys offering them for sale. They are mostly covered with minute crystallizations. Amygdaloid is also common here, as is the case in most districts where calcareous and basaltic masses prevail. There is a rock at the mouth of the bay, concerning which I was informed that it is partly granitic partly basaltic, but it is not often accessible on account of the excessive surf about it.
The next day I went on to Drogheda through Dundalk, and from Drogheda
The next day, the 31st of August, about one o'clock I re-entered Dublin, collecting by the way from a limestone quarry between Swords and Dublin several very good specimens of organic remains.