The next day was devoted to the fine wild gap of Dunloh. All mountainous regions abound with dells, or glens, or valleys, by whichever term they may be called — breaks in the enormous masses of stone of which the mountains are composed, assuming various forms and appearances, according to the courses of the mountains which they intersect. Sometimes they seem but as breaks between masses of stone of different descriptions, which, having no regular point of union, leave this gap between them; since it often happens that the rocks on one side of such a dell are of one description, and those on the other of a very different. This is strikingly exemplified at Loch Hela in the county of Wicklow, one side of which dell exhibits rugged masses of granite, the other abrupt rocks of slate. But this is a geological question, and I am to describe these dells rather as objects of scenery.
None that I have seen presents more striking scenery than the gap of Dunloh. The road to it runs north of the lake; not immediately at the water's edge, but on rising ground a quarter of a mile above it. The country is dull, consisting of inclosures with stone fences, and destitute of trees; but from the road are several fine points of view over the lake and the mountains on the opposite shore. Two streams are crossed; the Deanagh, which runs into the lake, and the Laune, the only outlet by which the waters of the Lake communicate with
From this river the road turns round the head of the lake, and presently the entrance to the Gap appears, a vast chasm between immense rocks, having a considerable resemblance in the distant view to the Scalp in the county of Wicklow, though this is lost exceedingly the nearer it is approached; indeed all the features are upon a much more grand scale. The valley is reached by a considerable ascent; a stream pours down it, which has its course quite through the valley, expanding at intervals into lakes of some extent. The mountains at the entrance of the valley, and indeed the whole way through, but more particularly at the entrance, are very much scattered over with vast broken masses of rock, and on the brows are many masses which seem ready to fall at every moment; — woe to those who are within reach whenever such a catastrophe may occur! — Formerly the whole valley was so overstrewed with these masses that it was difficult even for a pedestrian to penetrate through it; but since it forms a convenient line of communication between the country north of the lakes and that bordering on the Kenmare river, Major Mahony, the proprietor of Dunloh Castle, has had a regular road made for the convenience of the country-people carrying the produce of their farms to the places where they find a sale for them. It has been a most laborious, but therefore the more patriotic work; at present it is not practicable for any kind of carriage more than half way through the gap, the other is still but a horse road; when more prosperous times will permit of the undertaking being further prosecuted, a carriage road is to be made the whole way: even to make the present, masses of solid rock have been in some places cut through. The great difficulty lies in conducting it round the lakes, the rocks coming down so much to the edge of the water as scarely to allow space for a road wide enough even for a single carriage; it has also been necessary, from the winding course of the stream and the rocks, frequently to change the side of the stream on which it is carried, and cross it by bridges. These bridges contribute very much to the picturesque
The gap is three miles in length, lying the whole way in a gentle ascent, so that the stream forms numberless little cascades between the lakes; besides this, in many places water pours down the sides of the mountains. The gap expands very much towards the upper end, forming a vast amphitheatre; and the mountains that close it being ascended by a zig-zag road, the head of the Upper Lake is seen at a vast distance below. Magillicuddy's reeks are here a very conspicuous feature. One of the tracks for ascending them is from this part, but that does not lead to the highest point, Gheraun-tuel, a much more circuitous route must be taken to reach that. The gap runs between Tomies mountain and the Purple mountain. The guide brought with him a musket and some powder, which was fired in different parts of the gap: the echoes are fine: still, I think, on this subject too much is said, or else the atmosphere was peculiarly unfavourable to them during my stay in the country. The water of this stream is some of the most pure, soft, and delicious that I ever tasted.
Returning along our steps, since there was no other way of quitting the gap, we proceeded to Dunloh Castle, about a mile or mile and half from it. A large tract of country here, round the north-west end of the lake, is still called McCarty More's country. Before the English conquest, when Ireland was divided into a number of petty sovereignties, the McCartys, a powerful sept, were sovereigns of a large district in the province of Munster, then called the kingdom of Desmond, which in the Irish language signifies South Munster. It comprehended the whole of what is now the county of Cork, the western part of the county of Waterford, and great part of the county of Kerry. McCarty More (which More signifies The Great) was king of Desmond, at the time of Henry the Second's invasion, and was one of the earliest among these petty sovereigns to swear fealty to him, consenting to pay him a yearly tribute. The present owner of the lands, which still retain the name of their ancient possessor, Major Mahony, is a descendant in the female line of the great Brian Boroimhe; the first ancestor of the O'Mahowns, or O'Mahonys, for so they should properly
What is now standing of Dunloh Castle, the residence of Major Mahony, is but a fragment of a much larger pile of building, the original extent being yet discernible. All that remains is a square tower, which admits only of one room on a floor, and the greater part of the lodging-rooms are in a separate building detached from the house. The old part of Blarney Castle is just the same kind of tower, and so is the tower at Ross Castle on the lake. Dunloh Castle is deeply embosomed in wood: and, though in the neighbourhood of such fine scenery, has no view from the windows: its owner bears a very high character in the country. I have to acknowledge the politeness of being invited in, to take shelter in the castle during a heavy shower of rain. I had intended taking the ruins of Aghadoe in my way home; they stand on a hill half a mile out of the road. But though the rain had ceased when I quitted Dunloh Castle, it soon recommenced with increased violence, so that the lake, the mountains, and every other object but those immediately by the road side, were wholly shut out from the view: adjourning, therefore, the seeing Aghadoe to another time, I hastened home, where I arrived about four o'clock, nor could stir out any more the rest of the day. On the fourth day, having obtained permission to see the grounds of Mr. Herbert at Mucruss, I went thither as my first object. The road was for some way the same that I had taken to Mangerton, crossing the river Flesk, and passing the grounds of another Mr. Herbert at Cahirnane, on the edge of the lake. The grounds of the two Mr. Herberts and of Mrs. Delany occupy so large a part of the shores of the Lower Lake, that from Ross Island to the channel which unites the two lakes, they can only be examined from the water, unless special permission be given by the owners of these places. Into those of Mrs. Delany and Mr. Herbert of Cahirnane I did not go; but the grounds of Mucruss are one of the striking features of the Lower Lake, and to omit them is to leave half that unseen. Yet, if I felt disappointment any where in the scenery, it was in the grounds of Mucruss; in any other place they would be much more a subject of admiration; but they are only pretty, they have no grand features in them, and here we can scarcely be satisfied with any thing that exhibits none; they are surrounded,
The entrance to the demesne is in a decayed village, where once was a flourishing iron-manufactory, but which, like too many other things of the kind in Ireland, has failed for want of encouragement. The ruins of the Abbey of Irrelagh, or Mucruss Abbey, form an important feature in this demesne, presenting themselves in several very picturesque points of view as seen from different quarters; they stand amidst the shade of tall trees, and are exceedingly overgrown with ivy and other plants, which add greatly to their effect. So much of the outward walls is standing that the extent of the buildings may be very well judged; this is the case, in particular, with the form and dimensions of the church. The entrance at the west end is by a lofty pointed arch, in good preservation, from which there is a very good view along the church to the great east window; this is also well preserved. The length from east to west is a hundred feet, the transepts from north to south are sixty; the tower is supported by four arches also entire. The cloisters too are well preserved, they surround a quadrangular area of forty-six feet every way. In the centre of the area is a very remarkable old yew-tree; it rises in one straight stem to the height of nearly twenty feet, and then throws out branches which completely overshadow the whole area, giving an indescribable additional gloom and solemnity to the gloom always inseparable from these kind of monastic remains. At two corners of the cloisters are stairs leading to the cells over them; but nothing very interesting is to be seen when they are ascended. A collection of skulls and other bones are piled together close by the west entrance to the church; but I saw none of those revolting spectacles of the dead too early disturbed and removed from, what are usually termed, their last homes, which have been so severely reprobated by some writers.
Mr. Weld says: "This abbey is a common and favourite place of burial; the limits of the cemetery are small, the depth of the soil inconsiderable. The consequence is, that coffins with their mouldering contents are not unfrequently removed to make room for others, long before decency can warrant such a measure. In a passage leading to the cloister, I once found a head with a considerable part of the flesh of the face and nearly the entire hair upon it,
Sir John Carr speaks still more strongly. "Whilst I was reading," says he. "a pathetic epitaph upon one of the monuments in the abbey, I felt myself affected by a putrid effluvia, and upon looking on each side, I observed for the first time, some bodies, which might have been interred two or three months, in Coffins, the planks of which had started, not half covered with mould. Upon quitting the spot, a great collection of skulls and bones promiscuously heaped up in niches in the walls, excited melancholy observation." — Again: "The soil of the abbey is very thin, and every effort has been made to dissuade the lower classes from bringing their dead here, but in vain. It is a fact, that those who have been buried six months or a year before, are raised and placed on one side to make room for those who are brought for interment afterwards. So loaded with contagion is the air of this spot, that every principle of humanity imperiously calls upon the indulgent owner to exercise his right of closing it up as a place of sepulture in future." Indeed, indeed, I saw not these disgusting sights: whether Mr. Herbert may have prohibited any more interments there, I really cannot say; if the evil was so great, he was scarcely justifiable in not doing it. All I can say is, that there certainly were skulls and bones lying by the west door of the church, but in nothing like the numbers represented, perhaps inspiring some pensive reflections upon the frailness of our mortal nature, but in which I could not find any thing to disgust; and for the rest, nothing was to be seen of the half uncovered mouldering coffins — nor was the sense of smelling more offended than that of sight. I thought there was something altogether in the ruins of Mucruss Abbey very solemn and well worth exploring.
Here is shown the tomb of the last of the O'Donoghoes. I do not recollect at what time he was buried, but I think within fifty years. The name of
There are many persons who have worked their imaginations into a positive and firm belief that they have seen such a vision: its appearance forebodes great good fortune to him who has the happiness of witnessing it. Moon-light nights are generally selected by the monarch for this ascent. Among a large cluster of islands or rocks between Ross Island and Mucruss, is one which is thought to resemble a horse drinking, and is thence called Horse Island; this is O'Donoghoe's horse, and when he is seen rising out of the lake on horseback, Horse Island vanishes. Our hero and his appearance rising from the lake are well described in a poem entitled Killarney, published about twenty years since by William Porter, Esq.; a poem which cannot fail to interest every person acquainted with the scenes it celebrates. The building Ross Castle is often ascribed to this renowned potentate. At the mouth of Ross Bay is a cluster of small islands, the most conspicuous of which is called O'Donoghoe's Prison; it is a tabular-appearing rock rising twenty feet above the water. This was the place of confinement selected by the prince for his disobedient and rebellious subjects. I was told that more than once soldiers from the barracks who have incurred punishment have been sent hither for a certain term. This may be true, or may not; and if such a punishment was substituted in the place
From the abbey we drove all through the grounds of Mucruss to Brickeen Bridge where the peninsula terminates, a course of nearly three miles. The house makes no show, and is by no means advantageously situated for a view any way over the beauties by which it is surrounded. The drive is very pleasantly diversified by lawns and shrubberies, but there is no one spot particularly striking. The guide carried me to a place which he called a marble quarry at the edge of Turk Lake; but I could not make any thing more of this marble than a coarse-grained limestone exhibiting various shades of gray and reddish brown, sometimes regularly striated with these colours, which seemed to pass with the guide for the veinings of the marble. In some places the stone assumes a slaty character, the calcareous veins uniting in places with a form of clay slate. On this peninsula, at the edge of Turk Lake, some years ago a copper mine was worked, but it has been abandoned many years. The discontinuance of the works was owing partly to mismanagement, partly to want of harmony among the persons concerned in them. Water had broken into the mine before it was abandoned, but not from the lake, and it was not found to impede the works. Mr. Weld says, that in searching among the rubbish about the shaft of this forsaken mine he found, besides the copper pyrites, its principal produce, gray copper ore, malachite, brown iron-stone, gray and red cobalt ore, besides other mineral substances. A hope was once entertained that cobalt might have been found in sufficient quantities, and of so good a quality as to become a valuable article of commerce; but when some specimens of it were sent to a potter in England for trial, he found it too much intermingled with copper and iron to be employed in his manufacture. The whole peninsula of Mucruss is a pale blue limestone; the same stone continues all round the shore of the lake by Cahirnane to the Flesk river, and several of the islands in this part of the lake are entirely composed of this stone. The figure of rock likened to a horse drinking is formed by the excavations every where common among limestone rocks. Another rock near it, called O'Donoghoe's Table, is formed in like manner by
Brickeen bridge unites the peninsula of Mucruss with the island of Brickeen: it is by this channel that boats from the Lower Lake commonly enter Turk Lake. Brickeen and Dinis islands close the lake to the west, running between the peninsula of Mucruss to the north and Turk mountain to the south. These two islands were once connected by a bridge, but that is no longer in existence; this channel is never used for entering the Turk Lake: boats sometimes go through that between Dinis Island and Turk Mountain; but the passage is narrow, the bushes and trees almost closing over it, and the water runs into the lake with such a prodigious rush, that the boat is hurried along very disagreeably; it is, therefore, rarely used. Dinis Island is one of the prettiest spots about the lakes to those who seek only for mild and tranquil beauty, but it has no grand features to boast. It produces the finest arbutuses hereabouts.
A boat was ordered to meet us at Brickeen bridge; and having taken a land survey of Mucruss peninsula, we now rowed round its southern shore. Turk Lake is sometimes called Mucruss Lake, from its running along one side of Mucruss peninsula, and sometimes the Middle Lake, from being in some sort, though not absolutely, between the two others; but the most common appellation is Turk Lake, from the great mountain of the same name bordering it to the south. We rowed first along the shore of Mucruss; the rocks here are curiously excavated, forming in various places arches, resembling exactly vaulted cellars, whence they are called O'Donoghoe's Cellars. Parts of the rock are sometimes so undermined by the constant attrition of the water, that they separate from the mass and are precipitated into the lake. Near the copper mines a mass of this kind has fallen, which now abides in the lake, exhibiting a most striking and fantastic figure, something like the ruins of an old gateway. I wonder that some similitude to this mass has not been found, after which to give it a name; but it is yet nameless. Turk Lake has not, like the others, its archipelago of islands; a single solitary one in the north-east corner is all that it can boast. Whether it is considered as a diabolical thing that while the other lakes are so rich in islands this should be so destitute, or for what reason I cannot tell, but something diabolical there must be about it, for it is distinguished as The Devil's Island.
Having coasted round the north and east shores of the lake, we come to Turk Cottage, which stands on a small platform of level surface, between the foot of Turk Mountain and the lake. A garden and small meadow fill up the platform. This cottage is not, like those belonging to Lord Kenmare, open for the reception of visitors to the lakes; they are only permitted to contemplate its beauties at an awful distance from the water, — no profane foot must dare attempt to invade the shore. Above is a large plantation of fir and larch, made by Colonel Herbert upon the slope of the mountain; and by its side runs down Turk Cascade, supplied by the superfluous water from the Devil's Punch-bowl, on Mangerton. Turk Mountain rises boldly and majestically above the lake, but does not exhibit any very marked features of broken rock masses, dells, or chasms. Nearly the whole side is more or less planted.
After making the complete circuit of the lake, we passed through Brickeen Bridge, and crossing over to Glenaa Bay, the south-western corner of the
Lower Lake, landed at Glenaa Cottage, delightfully situated on the bay,
having the beautiful mountain Glenaa full in view. Here the bait for the day
was prepared: — the boatmen had been angling in the lake, and caught some
little trout, which were broiled, and thus fresh from the water they were really
delicious. The mountain of Glenaa is by no means one of the most lofty hereabouts,
but may be pronounced one of the most beautiful, whether from the
wavy outline of its summits, the undulations presented by its slopes, its situation
directly above the lake, or the green with which its sides are clothed.
"There was a time, nor is that time long past,"
when the sides of Glenaa were clothed with stately forests, but against the
want of money not even their sylvan majesty could remain sacred; — to raise
money, they have all within the last twenty years been laid prostrate. Yet if
not waving with that luxuriance of foliage by which they were once adorned,
these declivities are still green, still beautiful: new saplings are springing up,
which, if not immediately, will ultimately, by their youthful charms and graces,
throw into oblivion the memory of their noble and illustrious ancestors.
In Glenaa Bay is the great salmon-fishery of the lake. The fisheries are the property of Lord Kenmare, who leases them out, with the restriction that the fish are never to be sold in Killarney at more than twopence a pound,
From hence we proceeded round Glenaa Point, which terminates the bay, along the south-western shore of the lake, to O'Sullivan's Cascade. Off Glenaa Point is an island which is still called Darby's Garden, an old man by name Darby having some years ago contrived to cultivate it as a garden. It is now well clothed with plants and herbage. The family of O'Sullivan has been mentioned as anciently of great distinction in this country. The cascade named after them is altogether the finest about the lakes. It is deeply embosomed in a wood, which, in preventing its becoming an object in the coup d'oeil of the landscape, to which it certainly would add one more beauty, renders it still more enchanting as a single feature. There are three distinct falls, each succeeding at a short interval to the other; the breaks adding to the beauty rather than diminishing it, and the rush of water is very great. This wood and cascade are upon the side of Tomies mountain; the height which the water descends is considerable, I know not at what it is computed.
Passing from this place to Ross Bay, we were so near the island of Innisfallen that I once more stopped there, and walked all round, which I had not time to do in my former visit: I was more enchanted than ever; it is indeed a delicious spot. Turning round the point of Ross Island, which forms the entrance into the bay, is a rock with a cavity which presents the appearance
Their first efforts were directed, not to the old shafts, but to a pit which, as
well as the shafts, was filled by the water which had burst in from the lake.
By means of the steam-engine,
by means of this giant-power the draining the pit was effected, and a rich vein of lead and copper was discovered, which for some time yielded such profit as proved an ample return to their expenditure, and the works were pursued with great alacrity. My guide had been employed in them for three or four years. They failed, however, at length; though the cause of the failure never seemed satisfactorily explained, for ore in abundance was still produced. Probably the expense of transport was too great, since there was no conveyance by water immediately from the lake, the river Laune not being navigable. The works had now been for some time abandoned, but the steam-engine still remained. The rocks are schistose, very much veined with quartz; silex forming a prevailing constituent of the common mass. The veins of pyrites are rich, and commonly exhibit a play of iridescent colours. Dark-gray copper ore is also very conspicuous. The veins of sulphuret ore are found intermixed with the copper, mineralized by a similar chemical operation. Veins of calcareous spar are frequent, receiving occasionally a greenish tinge, from the copper mingling
- That giant power, which from earth's deepest caves
Lifts with strong arm her dark reluctant waves,
Each cavern'd rock and hidden den explores,
Drags her dark coal, and digs her shining ores: —
Ross Island was once extremely well wooded, and esteemed one of the finest spots about the lakes. It is at present one of the least interesting, except as an object of mineralogy. Cut off only by a narrow channel from the marshy shore to which it was once united, a great part of it is still a marsh, while the remainder exhibits nothing but low coppice-wood; and in the most rocky parts the rocks rise to no height above the water. The flatness of the whole line of shore from the river Laune to the Flesk could only be compensated by its being beautifully wooded. The grand mountain scenery on the other side scarcely wants the addition of wood; I could almost think, indeed, that its grandeur and sublimity would suffer some diminution from the mountains being more clothed. I am not sure that the axe which felled the forests of Glenaa is entirely to be held in reprobation; but rich forests can alone give grandeur to a country on which Nature has not impressed any of her more stately features. Such is Ross Island: covered with lofty oaks, their towering heads, their spreading arms, their waving foliage, would give it grace and dignity in the absence of other graces, nor can the ravages here made by the axe be too severely deprecated. Upon the whole, though there are some very fine points about the Lower Lake, I think it, though far the largest, the least beautiful and interesting of the three. The exploring the mines of Ross Island concluded this day.