From six to eight days are requisite properly to enjoy all the charms of the neighbourhood of Killarney, and thoroughly to inspect its entire scenery. Then the picturesque ruins of some neighbouring castles must be visited, or the high mountain of Mangerton must be climbed, and the finger dipped into the little lake on its summit, to he convinced of the truth of the report, that, in summer as in winter, its waters are always icy cold, on which account, as well as from its round form, it is called by the people ‘The Devil's Punch-bowl.’ But this minute survey is incompatible with the arrangements of one who, like myself, intends to travel over the whole of Europe. On the following morning, therefore, I was again on the road, in order to proceed to Cork by the route of Kenmare and Bantry. As the mail-car
The mail-car having arrived, I proceeded on my way. Mangerton lay towering and clear before us, and over its summit there hovered a little cloud like a pillar of smoke. ‘In fact, sir, it looks exactly as if the devil was brewing his morning's drop in his punch-bowl there,’ said the driver as he arranged my seat. ‘He doesn't yet belong to the temperance society; for, as you see, to vex us temperance men, he uses a punch-bowl every day which would shame all the big-bellied teapots in Ireland together.’ ‘Surely,’ I replied, ‘there must be some difference between him and we mortals; but let him brew his punch, provided no rain comes out of his bowl on us to-day.’
As the first part of the road to Kenmare runs along the shore of the lakes, we had now almost a repetition of our boating excursion of yesterday; but as we were usually at an elevation above the water, the views and prospects were somewhat different. The road, which afterwards runs in many windings, over Turk Mountain, has been only recently formed, and passes through one of the most desolate and wildest regions in the west of Ireland, which for thousands of years before our time had only been traversed by those little mountain horses with straw bridles. Such a road could scarcely ever have been made by the poor Celtic inhabitants of this mountain country; and we shall soon have an opportunity of showing that they are not entirely insensible to the advantages it affords them. This is one of the benefits which Ireland derives, not from herself, but at the expense of England. But the Irish are unwilling to recognize as benefits all the advantages which spring from better roads, as, for instance, the new police stations, which are always erected upon them, and which render them in some respects similar to the patrol roads the Austrians are forming through the semi-barbarous countries of their military frontier.
The police station, which lay on our road, and at which we stopped, was a new, neat, spacious building. At a short distance it appeared like a little strong castle; and the natives may probably look upon it as a fort Uri in miniature, to keep them in awe. It lay at the highest part of the mountain, just where the road again begins to descend. All round was a wilderness, and reminded me of the military stations so often picturesquely situated in the wild regions of the Austrian frontier. The house contained eight men of the constabulary force, as it is called, and which is a military-armed police, now extended over the whole of Ireland, for the prevention of crime, the discovery and apprehension of criminals, the protection of property, and the preservation of the peace. It consists of 8000 men, classified and disciplined in the same manner as soldiers. They are commanded by inspectors-general, provincial inspectors, district inspectors, and other subordinate officers, and are distributed throughout the entire country in little bodies of from five to eight men. They are armed with carbines and swords, and also use their bayonets as daggers. They differ from the soldiers in their uniform alone, which is somewhat less ornamented and of a dark green colour. This police force is, therefore, properly a military garrison, though under another name. (The English constables carry no arms, but only a short, round baton.) Since the strongest men, and those only of the most unblemished characters, are admitted into this force, and then distributed into every corner of the land, they possess an extremely
Everybody knows that ‘the most disturbed of all the counties of Ireland’ is Tipperary, where there is a police station every three or four miles. The men receive excellent pay, twelve shillings a week each. I have somewhere read that these constables are mostly Englishmen; but from the inquiries which I made, I have no doubt but there are as many, if not still more, Irishmen among them. Even in the London police there are more Irish than English, for the latter are not over partial to this service.
So much is perpetually heard in Ireland of counties more or less disturbed, that the stranger is at first disposed to imagine that a rebellion must lately have broken out, but he gradually discovers that this is the continued and usual state of this wretched land. Riots, party-fights, murders through revenge, are every where more or less the order of the day; and we in Germany have not the slightest idea of a country in which the whole population is, in a certain measure, every moment disposed for rebellion, and seems to be involved in a universal conspiracy. Since the conquest of Ireland by the English, this has been the usual state of the country, which now and then (hitherto about every fifty years,) bursts into a preconcerted and bloody rising. I believe the entire history of modern civilized Europe cannot furnish any thing similar.
The Kerry mountains and valleys present only one wild and desolate waste, every where of a dark, smutty colour. As our car hovered far above on the heights, we could no where discover a tree, except here and there a few stunted birches, far down in the lonely valleys; and these my neighbour on the car—a cockney, who had issued forth on his first tour in search of the picturesque, and was now luxuriating among the natural beauties of Ireland—pronounced to be ‘wild plum-trees,’ as he had heard that they were very numerous on the mountains of Ireland. Little lakes
In the midst of this wilderness the road branches off to Derrynane Abbey, the country-seat and summer residence of the greatest man in Ireland—Daniel O'Connell. This mansion lies on the extreme point of a peninsula, close to the Atlantic Ocean; and in its neighbourhood are the estates and residences of his sons and relatives. A few miles distant, in the little town of Cahirsiveen, the house in which O'Connell was born is yet standing. It is a small dilapidated building, in a little hollow valley near the highroad. The O'Connells are an old Irish race, and many of them still possess extensive estates. But Daniel O'Connell, and his branch of the family, were originally poor, and they only hold their lands here as middlemen from the great head landlords. The origin of these middlemen I have already explained. Derrynane is one of those numerous abbeys which, since the time of Henry VIII. and of Cromwell, have become the seats of noble families, both in England and Ireland. O'Connell's hospitality is celebrated throughout the country, and when he is resident at the abbey, it is the gathering-place of many strangers. Even his political opponents have sometimes been compelled to assist in increasing his fame in this respect.
Some months ago, the carriage in which were travelling two, elderly ladies and a young gentleman, members of a well-known high Tory family, broke down, late in the evening, on one of the narrow roads of the wild country in the neighbourhood of Derrynane. As the servants declared they could not repair the damage, so as to enable the carriage to proceed, the party were compelled to make their way on foot, as best they could, through the wind and rain of a November night, towards a house which, by the lights in its windows, they perceived was fortunately at no great distance. Whilst proceeding thither, they were met by the servants of the house, whom the hospitable proprietor, on the first intimation of the accident, had sent to their assistance. ‘Our master,’ said they, ‘begs that you will do him the honour to make use of his house as long as it may be pleasing to you.’ ‘We are very much obliged to your master for his kindness; in fact, we were in no little despair at being surprised by such a mishap in this wilderness. What is your master's name?’ ‘Our
By those who are acquainted with his domestic life, O'Connell is much praised for abstaining from all political subjects when surrounded by his guests. On such occasions, any topic of conversation is by him preferred to politics. This is a rule generally observed by most political leaders and party-men in England, the internal politics of their country being entirely banished from the domestic circle. In France, on the contrary, whether in the salons, at soirées, or in family circles, politics are always discussed con amore.
Unfortunately, the great man had departed from Derrynane a few days before my visit to the neighbourhood, so that I was deprived of the opportunity, of which I should otherwise have availed myself, of paying him a visit in his mountain retreat.
At length we descended the hills and arrived at Kenmare, from whence, across an arm of the sea, a free prospect of the Atlantic Ocean opened on our view. On these occasions the Irish are accustomed to say: ‘From here, westwards in a straight line, there is no other land till you come to America!’ The Irish
Kenmare River, on which the little town of the same name is situated, is one of the most singular rivers in the world. Originally a small mountain stream, it is joined near the town by various tributaries, each only a few miles long, and then suddenly becomes an English mile in breadth; from this point it flows towards the ocean with a gradually increasing breadth of three, four, and five miles. Yet nature is not to blame for this monstrosity, but the geography invented by the Irish, which calls that a river which ought to have been designated Kenmare Bay.
The town of Kenmare is the property of the Earl of Kenmare, to whom Killarney also entirely belongs. Most of the Irish towns are the property, not of those who inhabit them, but of some great landowners. Thus Tralee belongs to a family named Denny, and Waterford to the Marquis of Waterford. Nay, even Belfast, a city with 60,000 inhabitants, belongs almost entirely to the Marquis of Donegal. The Earl of Kenmare is one of the titles of the Marquis of Lansdowne, a distinguished man in England, and one of the benefactors of Ireland. His extensive estates in Kerry, many of which we passed, are every where marked by improved husbandry, and increased prosperity and comfort of the tenantry.
At Kenmare is the only suspension bridge that Ireland possesses. The peninsula on the other side of the river is just as wild a country as that through which we had passed. One group of the mountains which form this peninsula is called the Glanerought Mountains, and another is named the Hungry Hills. I am ignorant of the meaning of the first name, but the latter is really very
The furze is the principal plant that grows in the clefts and chinks of the rocks, and its yellow blossoms now marked out several patches in the dark vallies, whilst through its bushes flitted pretty little birds, to which it afforded but poor lodging. These wilds have certainly never been more thickly inhabited, nor better cultivated, than at present; nor is it probable they will be for a long time to come. Irish patriots talk of the beautiful thick woods with which their island was once covered; but the arguments which they adduce to prove this appear to rest upon some very undefined accounts and expressions of a few old writers. Small islands, like Madeira, might indeed be suddenly deprived of their timber by improvident management; but that a forest of the extent of Ireland could be so thoroughly destroyed, as to vanish from the soil, with its full-grown old trees, its roots, and its perpetuating seeds, and leave not a trace behind, seems to me more than could be accomplished in the course of many centuries, even though the inhabitants, like those of Ireland, lived in perpetual savage strife and devastating hostility. That Ireland formerly had more wood than she now has, is proved by the large trunks of trees which are frequently found in the bogs; but I must protest against the endless beautiful groves which are said to have covered these very regions of rock.
The green potato-fields were here again most charming; and equally charming were the new school-houses, which have been erected here and there in these wastes. The road itself is also quite a new work, still more so than that of Killarney, having, I believe, only been completed a year and a half. Extraordinary difficulties had to be overcome in its formation: rocks were every where to be blasted, and at the highest point it was requisite to bore a tunnel through the mountain. Besides this, a multitude of other new roads have either been completed or are now in progress in Ireland, some of which are truly wonderful.
Thus far I had been the sole occupant of one entire cushioned side of the mail-car; and I was therefore well pleased that it occurred to a woman, who was also crossing the mountain, to jump up and seat herself beside me. She was a Sullivan—a name which is as common in this part of Kerry as O'Brien is in Clare, or Blennerhasset in Tralee. The inferior members of the clan are usually called simply Sullivan, but the higher ranks O'Sullivan. Another family equally numerous here is the M'Carthys; and the woman informed me that there were few people in Kerry who were not in some way related either to the one or the other. Her own father was a Sullivan, and her mother a M'Carthy. She was smoking, and had a piece of lighted turf in her hand, which she was conveying to her husband, who was at work in a potato-garden among the rocks. Twice, when I looked at her, she immediately offered me her pipe, which I was unpolite enough to decline. To offer a pipe, and gratefully to accept it, has ever been a customary trait of Irish politeness. I would like to know how it comes, that not only in Ireland, but almost through the whole world, so much politeness is connected with this stinking tobacco. With most savages the pipe of peace is customary! A pipe is the first civility offered to a visitor in Turkey; and in Paris the cigar-case is not only placed upon the table, but is the first mark of politeness that friend offers to friend, or the host to his guest; and generally throughout the whole of civilized Europe, those are deemed very unpolite by whom this ceremony is neglected! This custom is still more observed with tobacco in that form in which it shows itself in our snuff-shops. When in Europe a person presents his snuff-box to the friend who sits beside him, the act has precisely the same meaning as when the pipe of peace goes round in the wigwam of the savage. Peace is concluded, people consider themselves friends, and converse more freely with each other. Other things we do not offer so regularly. The pipe, which soothes the mind, puts people in good humour, stops the mouth of the angry and the ‘prise contenance,’ and infuses so much mildness, alone enjoys this privilege.
At the top of the mountain Mrs. Sullivan alighted, and climbed away through the rocks, with her piece of burning turf in her hand, the smoke of which enabled me to trace her course for some time. So usual is it for the Irish labourer to have a piece of ignited turf lying beside him in the field, that wherever you find the one you may be sure the other is not far distant.
After passing through an endless variety of blasted rocks and broken stones, we at length arrived at that portion of the road where its makers, tired of winding backwards and forwards, had
Numerous beautiful trees, in which some pretty country-seats are embosomed, enrich the valleys of Glengariff; and the bay on which the little village lies, is studded with islands like the lakes of Killarney. These islands have exactly the same peculiarities as those of Killarney, being covered with bog-stuff, furze-bushes, and occasional thickets; and as they are of all sizes, the bay appears as if it were full of great whales.
This is the renowned Bantry Bay, so spacious, so deep, so sheltered on every side, and so calm, that all the fleets in the world might here ride at anchor in perfect safety. It was in this bay that the French attempted to land towards the close of the last century; here also, according to Moore, the Colonists from Spain landed upwards of a thousand years before; and it was probably to this bay that the Phoenicians resorted in times of yore. Irish writers, who believe in a colonization from Spain, find many points of similarity between this western extremity of Ireland and Gallicia, the opposite north-western extremity of Spain, and are of opinion that a constant and direct communication by sea formerly existed between the Bay of Corunna and Bantry Bay. According to the old traditions cited by Moore, the Spaniards sailed over in so short a time, that, in order to render it credible, it is also necessary to suppose that a stronger current must at that period have set between these two points than is now known to prevail in any part of the world.
The views of the bay from our mountain roads were charming; and equally so were those from the road around the bay, into which several little rivers flow, while several arms of the sea stretch into the land. These we crossed by ivy-mantled bridges. The little islands, between which the barks of the fishermen were sailing backwards and forwards, were also exceedingly pleasing. Some of the steep promontories which jutted out into the sea were covered with potato-gardens to the very summits, whilst others were equally covered with turf. In a little creek we found a boat laden with oysters, which are very plentiful on the western coasts of Ireland; and for sixpence we obtained such an abundant supply of them, that some of our party ate too many, and were consequently very much indisposed on their arrival in Bantry. Apropos of oysters: whenever I ate oysters in Ireland, a story was always told me respecting a certain gentleman who, being recommended by his physician to take a few oysters before dinner, in order to sharpen his appetite, afterwards complained to the doctor that although he devoured a hundred every day before dinner, he did not find his appetite a bit better than before! As this story was invariably told every time I ate oysters I cannot attribute it