"And will ye not have put into it a drop of the mountain dew?" We must, though total abstinence men, run a bit of risk now, to do all that curious tourists do, so we said Yes. A drop or two mingled with the milk, when the thought instantly came that at home the dew would have been so like whiskey that we couldn't convince ourselves it was not, and so we cried "Hold! Enough!" She held, and it was enough. A shilling was presented; but no, she had done business too long, and her distinguished grandmother before her, to be outgeneralled by Yankees, and so came a demand for more, which was refused. Her maiden-like demure condition changed, and we left, thinking discretion and valor were synonymous terms; and she, probably of the same opinion, retired to try her luck with the next comer that way.
And now we enter the Gap of Dunloe, one of the notable places of Ireland. It is a narrow, wild, and romantic mountain pass, between highlands known as Macgillicuddy's Reeks on the right, and Purple Mountain on the left. The length of the pass is about four miles, and the road is circuitous and hilly. At the side, and at times crossing it, is a narrow stream called the Loe, at as many places expanded into five small lakes, or pools. The mountain-sides are rocky and often precipitous, and the road is here and there little more than a cart-path, winding right and left romantically between these hills, from which echoes finely the sound of our voices, or the bugle blown or the musket fired by peasants for the tourists' amusement. The journey is one thrillingly interesting, and about the only one of the kind that can be made on the island.
One of the five lakes, each of which has a name, is called Black Lough; and it is in this—a basin some one hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, with walls of stone, partially filled with a dark water—that St. Patrick is said to have banished the last snake. The guides have the story at their tongue's end, and glibly relate it in a schoolboy-like fashion, never tripping, nor leading one to so much as surmise that they have not told the story before.
The team takes us but a short distance into the gap, and we avail ourselves of animals called horses, who are ever on hand for the purpose. The guides owning them have followed us for a mile or more, in spite of our protestations, acting as though they knew we should hire their beasts, although we had with business-like earnestness told them that we thought we would walk. These animals were of a doubtful nature, that would confuse Darwin. They were either high-grade mules with short ears, or low-grade horses with long ones. We finally agreed with the owners, paying fifty cents each for the what-is-its, the guides engaging to take the animals back when we were done with them.
Emerging from the gap we come out at the Black Valley stretching away to our left, and hemmed in, amphitheatre-like, by the base of the hills. The first view of this sombre moor reminds one of the heath-pictures in "Macbeth." Kohl says of it: "Had there been at the bottom, among the rugged masses of black rock, some smoke and flame instead of water, we might have imagined we were looking into the infernal regions." We ride down a winding road in the great amphitheatre, and along to its extremity, and are at the end of our journey with the horses; and now we are to walk a half-mile through a footpath, over fields and through pleasant groves, to the once fine garden and present ruins of Lord Brandon's Cottage. Here, we are at the upper lake; and our boatmen, by arrangement of the hostess at Innisfallen House, were there awaiting our arrival at 1 p. m. They had, as usual, gone direct from Killarney to the lower lake, and had rowed over that and the two others to this point, having made, in reversed order, the tour over the lakes we are to take.
At 1.30 p. m., Thursday, April 25, we are in the row-boat with our two oarsmen, starting from the shore of the upper lake which is the smallest of the three—a sheet of water two and a half miles long, three fourths of a mile wide, and covering 430 acres, being about two thirds as large as the middle lake, and only a little more than a twelfth as large as the lower one. And here we must say, what of choice we would not say, that in most instances, where the imagination has free play, realities do not fulfil anticipations.
The fulsome and unqualified praises which have been bestowed on these really beautiful and justly celebrated lakes incline one to expect too much, and to overestimate their sublimity. This element, so ever present on the lakes of Scotland, is here often lacking. There is, however, a cleanliness in the remarkably irregular outline of their shores, and a beautiful decoration made by varying tinted and luxuriant vegetation, that largely compensates for a lack of vast boldness, and of great and precipitous rocky walls; and enough mountain views are in the near distance to give the scenery a majestic appearance, at times even grand in general effect. The heavy woodlands, with here and there a craggy cliff, as at the Eagle's Nest, combine to produce a charm not found about ordinary lakes. Yet it must in justice be said that our Lake George, and parts of Winnepiseogee, are their equals.
The upper lake, at its westerly end, contains twelve islands, which in the aggregate cover six acres—none of them, however, containing more than one acre, and some of them less than a quarter of one. McCarthy's is the one first reached. Arbutus is another, and the largest in the lake. It takes its name from the shrub, arbutus unendo. The leaves are a glossy green, and so arranged at the ends of the branches, that the waxen, flesh-like blossoms, as they hang in graceful racemes, or the later crimson fruit, seem embraced by a mantle of the richest verdure. All the islands abound in ivy, and the rocks and trees are often thoroughly bedecked with it. This lake is surely the finest of the three, and is so mainly from the fact of its having these islands and the great irregularity of the shore, embellished by the beautiful accompanying foliage. Being more immediately in the vicinity of the highlands, it has much of stern mountain effect and grandeur. From some points of view this little sheet of water appears to be entirely land-locked. Towards the lower end it becomes narrow, and is only a strip of water half a mile long. This is called Newfoundland Bay. On from this it is a yet narrower stream, varying from thirty to one hundred feet wide, and two miles long, which is the connecting part with the middle lake. To add a fascination, and intensify the interest of the tourist, every rock of respectable dimensions, and every island or cove, has its high-sounding name; for we pass Coleman's Eye, the Man of War, the Four Friends. We now arrive at the Eagle's Nest, a craggy formation 700 feet above the water, in the rugged clefts of which the eagle builds its eyrie. The young birds are taken from the nest between the middle of June and the first of July, and the rocks are so precipitous that the nests are only reached by means of ropes let down from above.
The echoes from this and the surrounding rocks are very fine, and we hear them grandly repeated from hilltop to hilltop—ever continued, and passed on with a clearly perceptible interval, till, weaker and weaker by their long, rough travel, they grow fainter, and at last melt away in some unknown cavern, or, as it were, infinitely distant glen, and are lost in the great realm of nothingness from whence they came.
Continuing on, we reach a fairy-like place, the Meeting of Waters, where our river, arriving at the middle lake, glides to the left around the end of Dinish Island, which reaches from, and is bounded by, this and the lower lake. Now we are at the Old Weir Bridge, very antiquated—consisting of two unequal arches, through which the water rushes with great earnestness and force. The boatmen do nothing but guide the boat, and it is a moment of intense interest to the novice, as we dash under one of the arches. Soon we are in the middle, or, as it is called, the Mucross, or Torc Lake.
This contains 680 acres, or forty more than a square mile. The principal islands are the Dinish and the Brickeen, and these are in fact the side and end walls, or the dividing barrier between it and the lower lake. There are three passages between them. This lake is oblong and narrow. In a line nearly straight we pass to the high, Gothic, single-arched bridge connecting it with the lower lake. Brickeen contains 19 acres, and is twenty or more feet up from the lake, and well wooded. Dinish is also well wooded. It contains 34 acres, and is a sort of watering-place. It has a small, rough, rustic stone wharf; also a cottage-hotel with pleasure-grounds; and by making previous arrangements dinner may be had.
Our provident hostess, having an eye to our comfort and another to her income, had sent by the boatmen a basket of luncheon, and so we dined on the lake itself, and not on the shore of it. Of the beauty of Torc Lake much may be said. It has a charm peculiarly its own. Shut
