to such matters so long established, as when Mr. King wrote two hundred years ago, ' We live in an Island almost infamous for bogs, and yet, I do not remember, that any one has attempted much concerning them.'" We were close to Knockcalltecrore when he finished his impromptu lecture thus:—
"In fine, we cure bog by both a surgical and a medical process. We drain it so that its mechanical action as a sponge may be stopped, and we put in lime to kill the vital principle of its growth. Without the other, neither process is sufficient; but together, scientific and executive man asserts his dominance."
"Hear! hear!" said Andy. "Musha, but Docther Wilde himself, Rest his sowl! couldn't have put it aisier to grip. It's a purfessionaler the young gintleman is intirely!"
We shortly arrived at the south side of the western slope of the hill, and as Andy took care to inform me, at the end of the boreen leading to the two farms, and close to the head of the Snake's Pass.
Accordingly, I let Sutherland start on his way to Murdock's, whilst I myself strolled away to the left, where Andy had pointed out to me, rising over the slope of the intervening spur of the hill, the top of one of the rocks which formed the Snake's Pass. After a few minutes of climbling up a steep slope, and down a steeper one, I arrived at the place itself.
From the first moment that my eyes lit on it, it seemed to me to be a very remarkable spot, and quite worthy of being taken as the scene of strange stories, for it certainly had something ' uncanny' about it.
I stood in a deep valley, or rather bowl, with behind me a remarkably steep slope of green sward, whilst on either hand the sides of the hollow rose steeply—that on the left, down which I had climbed, being by far the steeper and rockier of the two. In front was the Pass itself.
It was a gorge or cleft through a great wall of rock, which rose on the seaside of the promontory formed by the hill. This natural wall, except at the actual Pass itself, rose some fifty or sixty feet over the summit of the slope on either side of the little valley; but right and left of the Pass rose two great masses of rock, like the pillars of a giant gateway. Between these lay the narrow gorge, with its walls of rock rising sheer some two hundred feet. It was about three hundred feet long, and widened slightly outward, being shaped something funnel-wise, and on the inner side was about a hundred feet wide. The floor did not go so far as the flanking rocks, but, at about two-thirds of its length, there was a perpendicular descent, like a groove cut in the rock, running sheer down to the sea, some three hundred feet below, and as far under it as we could see. From the northern of the flanking rocks which formed the Pass the rocky wall ran northwards, completely sheltering the lower lands from the west, and running into a towering rock that rose on the extreme north, and which stood up in jagged peaks something like "The Needles" off the coast of the Isle of Wight.
There was no doubt that poor Joyce's farm, thus sheltered, was an exceptionally favoured spot, and I could well understand how loth he must be to leave it.
Murdock's land, even under the enchantment of its distance, seemed very different, and was just as bleak as Sutherland had told me. Its south-western end ran down towards the Snake's Pass. I mounted the wall of rock on the north of the Pass to look down, and was surprised to find that down below me was the end of a large plateau of some acres in extent which ran up northward, and was sheltered north and west by a somewhat similar formation of rock to that which protected Joyce's land. This, then, was evidently the place called the "Cliff Fields" of which mention had been made at Widow Kelligan's.
The view from where I stood was one of ravishing beauty. Westward in the deep sea, under grey clouds of endless variety, rose a myriad of clustering islets, some of them covered with grass and heather, where cattle and sheep grazed; others were mere rocks rising boldly from the depths of the sea, and surrounded by a myriad of screaming wild-fowl. As the birds dipped and swept and wheeled in endless circles, their white breasts and grey wings varying in infinite phase of motion—and as the long Atlantic swell, tempered by its rude shocks on the outer fringe of islets, broke in fleecy foam and sent living streams through the crevices of the rocks and sheets of white water over the boulders where the sea rack rose and fell, I thought that the earth could give nothing more lovely or more grand.
Andy's voice beside me grated on me unpleasantly:—
"Musha! but it's the fine sight it is entirely; it only wants wan thing."
"What does it want?" I asked, rather shortly.
"Begor, a bit of bog to put your arrum around while ye're lukin' at it," and he grinned at me knowingly.
He was incorrigible. I jumped down from the rock and scrambled into the boreen. My friend Sutherland had gone on his way to Murdock's, so calling to Andy to wait till I returned, I followed him.
I hurried up the boreen and caught up with him, for his progress was slow along the rough laneway. In reality I felt that it would be far less awkward having him with me; but I pretended that my only care was for his sprained ankle. Some emotions make hypocrites of us all!
With Dick on my arm limping along we passed up the boreen, leaving Joyce's house on our left. I looked out anxiously in case I should see Joyce—or his daughter; but there was no sign of anyone about. In a few minutes Dick, pausing for a moment, pointed out to me the shifting bog.
"You see," he said, "those two poles? the line between them marks the mearing of the two lands. We have worked along the bog down from there." He pointed as he spoke to some considerable distance up the hill to the north where the bog began to be dangerous, and where it curved around the base of a grassy mound, or shoulder of the mountain.
"Is it a dangerous bog?" I queried.
"Eather! It is just as bad a bit of soft bog as ever I saw. I wouldn't like to see anyone or anything that I cared for try to cross it!"
"Why not?"
"Because at any moment they might sink through it; and then, good-bye—no human strength or skill could ever save them."
"Is it a quagmire, then? or like a quicksand?"
"Like either, or both. Nay! it is more treacherous than either. You may call it, if 'you are poetically inclined, a 'carpet of death!' What you see is simply a film or skin of vegetation of a very low kind, mixed with the mould of decayed vegetable fibre and grit and rubbish of all kinds which have somehow got mixed into it, floating on a sea of ooze and slime—of something half liquid half solid, and of an unknown depth. It will bear up a certain weight, for there is a degree of cohesion in it; but it is not all of equal cohesive power, and if one were to step on the wrong spot—" He was silent.
"What then?"
"Only a matter of specific gravity! A body suddenly immersed would, when the air of the lungs had escaped and the rigor mortis had set in, probably sink a considerable distance; then it would rise after nine days, when decomposition began to generate gases, and make an effort to reach the top. Not succeeding in this, it would ultimately waste away, and the bones would become incorporated with the existing vegetation somewhere about the roots, or would lie among the slime at the bottom."
"Well," said I, "for real cold-blooded horror, commend me to your men of science."
This passage brought us to the door of Murdock's house—a plain, strongly-built cottage, standing on a knoll of rock that cropped up from the plateau round it. It was surrounded with a garden hedged in by a belt of pollard ash and stunted alders.
Murdock had evidently been peering surreptitiously through the window of his sitting-room, for as we passed in by the gate he came out to the porch. His salutation
