With the World's Great Travellers Volume Iii Part 9

Beyond Staffa we discerned, as yet indistinctly, the tower of the cathedral upon the Isle of Iona; and, more distantly to the extreme west, the island of Tiree; while close upon our left appeared the range of rocky precipices which render the coast of Mull so interesting.... In the distance rose proudly to heaven the lofty summit of Ben More, and the lesser mountain of Mamclachaig, in Mull.

Little islets, some of them bearing vestiges of ancient forts, are scattered over the face of the deep, between Ulva and Staffa, to which island, as we approached, our gaze was eagerly directed; and as we beheld its unrivalled columnar structure more distinctly, we were enabled to appreciate more justly the far-famed wonders of this precious gem of the sea. Having stayed our course underneath its most precipitous and attractive side, fronting the southwest, we instantly got into the boat, and rowed off for Fingal's Cave, over unusually quiescent water.

As the tide was ebbing fast, we landed at the entrance of the cave underneath the most magnificent arch it is possible to conceive; the mouth of the cave being seventy feet high and about forty-two broad.

We scrambled on without difficulty along its eastern side, over the flat tops of the broken yet upright pillars, which form an excellent causeway, into the interior of the cave, and there contemplated, with infinite awe and admiration, this magnificent temple of the G.o.d of Nature....

This celebrated cave is entirely composed of basaltic pillars, having from five to six sides in general, but varying to seven or eight, the ends of which are generally about two feet in diameter, accurately corresponding with each other at the roof and bottom of the cavern, which has been formed, it may be conjectured, by the action of the sea undermining the jointed columns, and thus producing the excavation, which gradually diminishes in breadth to its termination, two hundred and twenty-seven feet from its entrance. This majestic vault is poetically termed in Gaelic, Uiamh Binn--the Musical Cave--from the echo of the waves within its mighty recesses, and somewhat unaccountably has obtained the name of Fingal, though tradition has not connected it in any way with the ill.u.s.trious exploits of that Ossianic hero.

As the tide never entirely leaves the cave, the only floor it has is the beautifully translucent green wave of the sea, reflecting from its bosom those tints which vary and harmonize the darker hues of the rock, and often throwing on the basaltic columns the flickering lights which its undulating surface receives from the rays of the sun without.

The roof of the cave is extremely curious and beautiful, the interstices between the pillars being filled up by stalact.i.tes of varied hue, whose beautiful tints have the fine effect of greatly enriching this natural mosaic work. The murmur of the swelling tide, mingling with the deep-toned echoes of the vault, which grandly reverberated to the repeated reports of our double-barrelled pistol, added to the stupendous magnificence of the columns, and the splendid singularity of the scene, produced emotions in the mind which defy description, and which future impressions will never be able to obliterate.

Reluctantly quitting the Cave of Fingal, we proceeded in our boat under the highest part of the magnificent colonnade of basaltic pillars, which rise to the height of one hundred and twelve feet above high-water mark, between Fingal's Cave and a square dark aperture in the lowest stratum of the rock called the Boat Cave, because it is accessible by that mode alone, and runs in the rock one hundred and forty feet, like the gallery of a mine. The columnar structure of the trap rock is extremely evident above and around this cave, and continues equally so as far as the Cormorant's or McKinnon's Cave to the west, which derives its former name from the feathered race that inhabit it, and of which a fine specimen flew over our heads as we approached the s.p.a.cious entrance of the cave.

This singular aperture is peculiarly striking from the simplicity and regularity of its form. The columns are extremely perfect, and rise immediately from a black amorphous ma.s.s of indurated matter, through which are dispersed nodules and fragments of a still darker rock, altogether closely resembling the scoriae of a volcano, strongly corroborative of the igneous origin of basaltic rocks. The height of this cave is fifty feet, its breadth forty-eight, and its length two hundred and twenty-four feet. The range of columns over its front is extremely beautiful, being hollowed or bent into a concave recess, while the upper part presents a curious and regular geometric ceiling of a striking and unusual appearance.

Repa.s.sing the Boat Cave and the range of columns above it, we landed below the echoing arch of the great cave, and availing ourselves of the natural steps afforded by the gigantic causeway, which rises step by step up to the base of the grand colonnade, walked to the detached rock called Buachaille ([Greek: Bougolos]), or the Herdsman. This noted rock rises about thirty feet above the waves, consisting of an agglomeration of columns resting against each other, and meeting, until they form a conical body, which appears to lie upon a bed of singularly curved horizontal columns visible only at low water,--an advantage which we fortunately enjoyed, and found several sea anemones in the hollows of the rocks.

Pa.s.sing a rugged point where the causeway projects considerably, we came suddenly upon the Scallop or Clamsh.e.l.l Cave, so justly esteemed one of the most wonderful features of this famous island. This cave is a large rent or fissure in the rock, one hundred and thirty feet long, thirty in height, and eighteen in breadth at its entrance, where it presents on one side the singular phenomenon of the curved and contorted, yet as usual polygonal, columns of basalt, bent so as to form a series of ribs, each forty or fifty feet long, without a joint, their ends standing up and terminating abruptly, not unlike the inside view of the timbers of a ship. On the opposite side of the cave the broken ends of the pillars are so disposed as to bear a general resemblance to the surface of a honeycomb. The lateral dimensions of this cave gradually contract until they terminate in a long, narrow fissure in the rock. By the continued basaltic causeway on the northern side access is obtained to the table-summit of the island, upon which black cattle find good pasturage, though a ruined hut and an extensive prospect are all that can be expected in requital of the fatigue of the ascent.

This celebrated island, it may be remarked, lies in the same longitude with the Giant's Causeway on the northern coast of Ireland.

Returning from the Clamsh.e.l.l Cave round the point of the causeway, we regained the Buachaille rock, under which, in the narrow channel between it and the causeway, just sufficient to allow it to swim, we found our boat, and were conveyed in it back to the steamboat, whence we surveyed, with unsated curiosity, the wonderful island we had just explored, and had ample opportunity of appreciating the truth of its Norwegian derivation from _staff_, a stave, to which those barbarians likened its columns. The grand southern facade of the island is formed of three beds of trap-rock of unequal thickness; the lowest being a conglomerate tufaceous trap, about fifty feet thick on the western side, but, in consequence of its inclination, disappearing under the sea a little to the westward of the great cave. The middle bed is composed of basaltic columns, placed vertically on the plane of their bed, and of unequal depth, varying from thirty-six to fifty-four feet. The upper stratum consists of amorphous and tufaceous trap, intermixed with small basaltic veins and columns, and by its inequality and depth forms the contour of the island, whose surface is covered with turf, and presents nothing remarkable. The cliffs upon the northern sh.o.r.e of the island are very rugged and irregular, and contain about five caves of lesser note, being remarkable only for the resounding of the waves upon breaking into them, resembling much "the cannon's opening roar."

[Not far removed from Staffa is the famous isle of Iona, celebrated as the place where Columba, an Irish sixth century saint, founded a monastery and converted the inhabitants from Druidism to Christianity. The establishment founded by him flourished for centuries, and the ruins of the cathedral and other antique buildings still remain. One of these, "the Reilig Ouran, to the south of St. Oran's Chapel, was for centuries the ordinary burial-place of the Scottish kings, whose tombs, to the number of forty-eight, form a long and continuous series of oblong narrow stones, laid flat side by side, and bearing scrolls and effigies, but no inscriptions."]

Tradition has recorded Fergus the Second as the earliest monarch of the line, having been entombed about 420 A.D., and included among the number his successors down to Macbeth; though Macculloch conjectures, from the circ.u.mstance of the body of Alexander II., who died at Kerrera, having been conveyed to Melrose for burial, that Iona did not enjoy so great a reputation as the burial-place of kings as it is commonly said to have done in the earlier ages of the Scottish monarchy. However, our conductor, parallel to the royal tombs of Scotland, pointed out to us a similar line, containing eight Norwegian princes or viceroys of the island, during the remote period when that barbarous people exercised sovereignty over the Isles of the Gael. These tombs are chiefly distinguished by the Runic knots and curious representations of vessels rudely sculptured upon the oblong pieces of primitive rock which cover their graves. Adjoining these, a row of four similar stones indicate the graves of as many Irish kings, near to which is said to lie one king of France. Altogether they const.i.tute perhaps the most extensive a.s.sociation of crowned heads in the habitable globe.

[The latter "kings" were perhaps but chiefs, and here, near the royal tombs, are buried most of the insular Highland chieftains, the Macdonalds, the Macleans, and others of ancient days.]

IRELAND AND ITS CAPITAL.

MATTHEW WOODS, M. D.

[Among recent books of travel few have attained more immediate and flattering success than Dr. Woods's "Rambles of a Physician," the racy story of a run through Ireland, Britain, and the continent of Europe. The author has keen powers of observation and fluency in description, and has put on record much that other travellers fail to mention. We give his _resume_ of his run through Ireland and his telling description of what he saw in the people's quarter of Dublin.]

I have been strolling at leisure through the streets, and find myself at the end of the long twilight perplexed instead of pleased by what I have seen. Why is it so difficult to get at the truth about Ireland? Why is it that, when a man begins to talk about even its beauty, he exaggerates it beyond recognition, and that the very few who do give the plain facts are not believed? Why do I read in a little book that I have just found on the parlor table, and which explains the origin of the name "Emerald Isle," the following words, paraphrased from a popular history: "The name Emerald Isle is generally supposed to have been derived from the _evergreen appearance of her sh.o.r.es_, whereas it really originated from the ring which was set with the words 'Optimo Smaragdo,' and which Pope Adrian sent to King Henry IV. as the instrument of his invest.i.ture with the dominion of the land." Now, the truth is, Ireland's sh.o.r.es are not "evergreen;" not green at all, but brown and barren, with occasional patches of bright yellow when the _prussach's_ in bloom, and bronze when the blossoms fall.

From Queenstown to Cork there is, I admit, a refreshing verdure, especially attractive because of the monotony of the recently-crossed sea, and the houses, too, in this strip, are enveloped in flowers; but this is not because they are in Ireland, but is rather due to their being occupied by English or Scotch or their descendants, who sing thus "the Lord's song in a strange land." Yet from Cork to Killarney, by the Prince of Wales route, you rarely see a bit of verdure; not a flower by the roadside, nor in a window, nor the slightest attempt at the beautification of a home, or to make the best of little. For part of the way not a green field, nor a tree, nor a shrub, nor a weed, nor a blade of gra.s.s, nor the song of a bird, nor the hum of an insect,--nothing, absolutely, but brown, barren desolation, a.s.sociated with a sort of solitude that but intensifies the gloom. Occasionally a narrow belt of potatoes encircling a cabin, always built without mortar, as there is no sand in Ireland, is the only relief from the depressing waste until you reach Glengariff, where you find the English idea again, which has covered the barren rocks with flowers and fruit, comfortable homes and waving grain, the contrast, indeed, making the most taciturn eloquent in praise. From Glengariff to Killarney the same sterile desolation. Miles and miles without a bit of pleasant vegetation to rest the weary eyes.

The district suggesting rather some of the dismal places described by Dante or Virgil, Ariosto, Ta.s.so, or Milton, as the abode of souls condemned, rather than districts occupied by living men.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CUSTOM-HOUSE, DUBLIN, IRELAND]

After pa.s.sing through these regions of perpetual misery and despair, these birdless and treeless wastes, you get to regard any little bit of green as a G.o.dsend. You have, perhaps, closed your eyes to shut out the depressing melancholy of the apparently anathematized place; you cannot shut out all thoughts of the wretched and benighted men that relentless fate seems to have anch.o.r.ed on these more relentless sh.o.r.es. You have for some time past been ascending the side of a whin-spangled mountain; having reached the summit, the vehicle stops,--you look abroad, and behold the Islands of the Blest, Civitas Solis, Utopia, the New Atlantis, Paradise, what you will; otherwise, Killarney is at your feet, and you feel

"Like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes, He stared at the Pacific,--and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise,-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

It was here that, when we sought O'Holleron [an enthusiastic Irish patriot of the party], who had suddenly disappeared, we found him with bent head, tears running down his cheeks, and sobbing. You descend from this Pisgah to the lakes, and remain for a few days, until you have exhausted your collection of exclamations, and have repeated them again in writing to your friends, when you proceed.

From here to the Liffey the country is not so brown as the region through which you have pa.s.sed, but still unattractive in the extreme. It is not green, but greenish, with most of the small fields, as is the mode here, enclosed within thick walls of stone, built without mortar, and void of vegetation. Farms small (average size about six acres), tumble-down houses, no inspiring legends nor traditions, intellects dead, no past, present, nor future, nothing but the same dreary lament, in which everything partic.i.p.ates,--the emigrant, landlord, tenant; the very clouds weep over it; hardly ever cease. At every cl.u.s.ter of houses, at a crossroad, the number of bare-limbed women, wearing but two garments, one of them a petticoat, coming only below the knees, makes you think of Gros's remark, that "Irishwomen have a dispensation from the pope to wear the thick end of their legs downward."...

Visitors here find the country so ludicrously, or rather so mournfully, different from what they have been taught to expect--the Isle of Saints; the Emerald Isle; "the land of chaste women and brave men;" the hospitable land; "a kind-hearted people;" "a people of sobriety and industry," are some of the epithets used--that, unless sickened into silence by the humiliating reality, they think of what they have read and heard as a joke, and, to keep the tears back, joke too; and this I believe is the origin of many of the hilarious things written about Ireland.

You might think the birth of the Duke of Wellington and Oliver Goldsmith here would have raised this part of the island above the commonplace, as that of Burns did Ayr; of Shakespeare, Stratford; of Gray and Penn, Stoke Poges; of Goethe, Frankfort; or of Emerson, a few white houses upon a New England plain; but no, there are no memorials in this district at all, except the scant fragments left by the old pagan and semi-christianized natives before the land was the home of thriftlessness and whiskey. The picture is the saddest of all the sad pictures of modern retrogression, with no prospect of the advent of a mind capable of suggesting the proper remedy.

[Certainly one cannot but say, after this depressing picture by one "to the manner born," that Ireland needs regenerating.

We give next his impressions of Dublin, which are no more enlivening in tone.]

But about Dublin. What of it? It is certainly a place of handsome munic.i.p.al buildings, and others, too, built in an imposing manner, and yet all there is architecturally great in the whole city you see at a glance, the moment you cross O'Connell's Bridge. The first view, therefore, is impressive in the extreme; the buildings magnificent, splendidly proportioned, symmetrical. You can see them all at once, and are delighted; but penetrate those vistas, and behold them,--a suit of sixteenth-century mail for man and horse on Sancho Panza and his mule, or a gracefully painted window that shuts off an ugly view,--all that you see at the first glance is all that there is.

To be sure, there are many churches,--perhaps one hundred,--including Methodists, Moravians, Friends, Baptists, Unitarians, Presbyterians, Jews, besides those belonging to the two religious bodies most numerous here,--the Churches of Ireland and Rome; some of them of great beauty; ostentatious, to be sure, as if they were competing with each other in display; and yet with all this the city has none of those pleasant surprises that you expect in old towns, and that you find even with us [in America], and more so, I judge, in towns on the Continent; that is to say, narrow, clean streets opening into wide courts, having buildings with carved fronts and pillars, and the like, or sudden bends in a street, where the commonplace becomes magnificence. There is nothing of this in Dublin,--no curious doors or windows, no "jutty frieze" nor "coign of vantage." Very often an attempt at grandeur, but marred by defective details. The interiors, too, as far as I could penetrate, indicating more the desire for elegance than the capacity,--gay-colored window-shades, but torn; door- and window-curtains, but faded; window-boxes, broken and hanging askew, with flowers withering, either from the smoky atmosphere or neglect; everything black from coal-dust, and no flowers at all. No wonder Moore wrote so touchingly about the last rose of summer.

Plants, to my sorrow, were not in abundance. I searched the grounds of Trinity and everywhere else in vain for a rose or anything else that bloomed, and feel, therefore, as if Tom Moore's rose must have been the last of its race; but what Dublin lacks in flowers it makes up in taverns. Myriads--to quote again from Adam Clarke--of groggeries and distilleries; one of these so large that it looks as if the muddy river that runs through the city was dug there merely to carry its barges of stout to people at the other end. It appears also here, like home, as if these same gentry, who become rich on the drunkenness of the people, were rather important factors in munic.i.p.al affairs. One of these, Guinness,--I feel, though, like apologizing for mentioning his name in connection with liquor-dealers, as his commodity is stout,--however, is the philanthropist of Dublin, the restorer of St. Patrick's, the supporter of missionaries, the insurer of all his employes' lives, etc., and not only has a monument here by Foley, but was also knighted during the present reign. You remember d.i.c.kens,--"The n.o.bility can brew, but they can't bake."

The streets are ornamented with many good statues, including Goldsmith, Moore, Burke, Grattan, Stokes, Lords Carlisle, Corrigan, Eglinton, Smith O'Brien, and others; but the University, the gift of that friend of learning, Queen Elizabeth, is perhaps the chief glory of the town; while "the Liberties," a portion of which I explored to-day, is probably her greatest disgrace. From the lanes and alleys that penetrate this malodorous district emerge the most curious race, I would judge, that has ever been found in a civilized town. Here you find ill.u.s.trations in abundance, not only of the "philosophy of clothes," but of the comedy and tragedy as well; this tendency to wear other people's garments being one of the characteristics of the tribe, and the city being very liberal in the matter of supplying them with shops where they may procure their wares.

In Cork the chief articles of _pet.i.t_ commerce are cast-off clothing and "bits of mate," especially tails of things piled up on stalls, the clothing spread on the streets; while in Dublin it is second-hand clothing and bones, sold in mouldy dens,--"bone warehouses,"--twelve feet wide, yawning like Elijah's cave after the ravens had been doing the generous thing by him for months. In turning a corner, a fellow, standing on his knees (stumps) near one of these, accosted me, asking for money to help pay for a pair of cork legs, his own blown off in a dynamite "experiment." Why not Dublin legs? I thought. "He needed but five shillings more," he said; "they were already made, but the thief of a maker would not let him have them until he had paid every penny."

Looking up into my face in a sort of confidential aside, he added, "True enough, sir; he's giving them to me at cost."

In the act of contributing to the needed balance, a young lady of perhaps thirty-five autumns, and dressed in a c.r.a.pe hat, linen duster, split down the back, and who had heard the pitiful story of the descendant of Simon Tappert.i.t, approached and said, "Don't give him a ha'penny, sir; he has one pair of legs in p.a.w.n already; and he has two wives and nine children that beg for him besides. If you have anything to spare, give it to me, sir; I'm an orphan."

What could not Herr Diogenes Teufelsdrockh say about such a pandemonium of rags as are to be found here? "Happy he who can look through the clothes of man into the man." No difficulty here in being happy, if holes can help you. You are among a colony of savages, as much in conceit with their parti-colored wardrobe as a Mohawk with his beads.

Everything, from the "goodly Babylonish garments--the mantles of Shinar, from a.s.syrian looms," down to the cast-off tarpaulin of discharged or disgraced tars, are on the backs of the denizens of the Liberties. No one is wearing the clothes made for him. The unexpected is the most common. One fellow had on the cast-off coat of a policeman, too small to reach across his naked body, with a pair of trousers with scarlet stripes, billowing down to the uppers of his soleless shoes. Another bare-footed man had nothing on but an ulster; another, daintily picking his way across the street to one of the rag and bone shops that are as thick here as leaves in Vallombrosa, and between his trousers and short-waisted coat, with long tails, was a yawning gulf of dark flesh, that a crimson sash tried in vain to conceal. Another had on an overcoat with but one sleeve; a hole in the back large enough for him to thrust his head through; fastened down the front by having bits of the coat pulled through the b.u.t.tonholes, and kept from slipping back by butchers'

skewers.

Knee-breeches, red coats, c.o.c.ked and battered stove-pipe hats, swallow-tailed coats, costumes of every clime, together with the official garments of the army in rags, are found here on the backs of scoundrels that look as if they would run from a bit of soap as if it were the plague,--if, indeed, they would _run_ from anything. The women, like the men, indescribable. The saddest part of it, the children; scores of half-naked little souls, swarming around and looking as if all they ever had to eat they picked up in the streets; have nothing of childhood about them but its seriousness; children that have never been combed or washed; boys having nothing on but the trousers of men, the waistband tied about their necks, their arms thrust through the pocket-holes, and the legs rolled up like the coat-sleeves of "the Artful Dodger." One little fellow wore a swallow-tailed coat and stockings, nothing else; the strange thing about it, they are not aware how curious they look; but the ladies! the very exuberance of grotesque finery they exhibit silences my modest pen....

P.S.--You know that it is a custom among the subjects of England to conclude all public meetings, especially of a secular nature, by singing "G.o.d save the Queen." The only exception to this rule, I believe, are the Irish Nationalists; they don't want G.o.d to do anything of the sort, and have consequently subst.i.tuted for the National Anthem a song ent.i.tled "G.o.d save Ireland," which they sing in season and out of season. You can always tell the politics of a district by the number of fiddlers, _prima donnas_, tin whistle and jews-harp performers that play this new vent for patriotism.

_a propos_ of this, in coming home this evening I read on a great sign, at the door of a dingy little drug-shop near the Liberties, the following combination of enterprise and patriotism (which struck me as being odd, and which, for your amus.e.m.e.nt, I transcribed, punctuation points and all):

"Prepared Castor Oil a penny a dose!

G.o.d Save Ireland?

Epsom salts 4 doses for a half-penny!

G.o.d Save Ireland?

Seidlitz Powder 6 pence a box!

G.o.d Save Ireland?"

and so on, all the way to the bottom, until G.o.d had saved Ireland, I think, some fifteen or sixteen times, but always after a powerful physic; the last line of the placard was,--

"Home Rule Forever!

G.o.d Save Ireland?"