Part 3

The most magnificent view of the Great Lake and its environs is that from the Yellow Mountain (1), about two miles to the Northward. The eye passing over a rich valley, meets the lake in the center, with the Eagles Nest, and the other mountains which stretch to the upper lake, behind it: on one side are Glená, Tomé, and M’Gilly Cuddy’s Ricks, which lose themselves to the Westward; on the other, Turk, Mangerton, Glanflesk, and the Paps, in the opposite direction; all together forming a range of more than twenty miles. The waving outline of these mountains is uncommonly beautiful: the lake is happily placed in the center; and there is a degree of unstudied regularity in the whole, which, added to the majesty of the single parts, makes a noble, regular, and striking picture.

Aghadoe (2) was of old an episcopal seat, and a place of some consequence: a ruined turret, and the shattered walls of a cathedral, are the only vestiges of it remaining. It stands on an eminence to the North of the lake, near the western extremity, and commands a most extensive prospect of its borders, and islands. Innisfallin, and the western cluster, appear from hence in perfect beauty: the shaggy sides of Glená, and Tomé, are finely opposed to the level shores; the distant islands, referred to their contiguous banks, have the air of so many promontories; and the stately mountains, Turk and Mangerton, rising from behind the peninsula of Mucrus, complete one of the most beautiful scenes in nature.

Dunlow castle (3), the seat of Mr. Crosby, is the best station for viewing the lake from the West. It stands on a perpendicular cliff over the river Lune, about a mile from its source, and with the surrounding scenery is a very fine object. From hence the islands are seen in a different, but less pleasing situation; the view is bounded to the right by Tomé, and Glená; and, taking in the sloping bank, and the village of Killarney, to the left, terminates agreeably on Mucrus, and the high grounds beyond it: The several doublings, and turns, of the river, that winds through the rich valley beneath, have a pleasing effect; and for a contrast, the bleak sides of the Ricks, and the hollow Glynn which divides them from Tomé, afford one sufficiently glaring.

The views from the East (4) are very numerous, and beautiful: there is scarce a break, or height, along the Peninsula, that does not present a new face of things, or a different arrangement of them. The eminence near the abbey, the meadows and gardens at Mucrus, and the point of Camillan, where Turk, Glená, and the Eagles Nest, meet the eye at once, must be noted by the most careless observers.

To those who would have a perfect knowledge of the lakes, the top of Turk (5) is the best station. From thence they appear as distinctly, as if delineated on canvass; but the minuter beauties are lost by the height of the mountain, and at best, a prospect from such an overtopping eminence, is better calculated for the Ichnographist, than the man of taste and fancy.

From the side of Mangerton (6), about one fourth of the common ascent, there is a very commanding prospect of the Great Lake, and the adjacent country, which shews the objects more in the light of perspective than that from Turk, at the same time that it preserves the natural arrangement of the islands, and the sinuosity of the bays. Here the Peninsula seems to float on the surface of the water like a vast serpent, and, when illuminated by the sun’s rays, displays its green spiry length, every where distinct with shining beauties, in a manner at the same time singular, and pleasing.

From the top of this mountain, ascended by a tedious path of three miles, the prospect is wild, commanding, and in a manner unbounded. On one side lie the lakes, diminished almost in the scale of Shakespear’s fancied simpler: On the other, at some distance, the noble river of Kenmare, along which the eye passing for near thirty miles reposes at length on the swelling bosom of the Atlantic. On all sides save one the country is mountainous; to the East the mountains trend away in an irregular ridge, till obscured and lost in the opaque vapours; to the West, and indeed in every other direction, they are thrown together in as tumultuous, and wild an assemblage, as if Chaos had been here arrested in his billowy career, and chained to stability by the supreme _fiat_. The lakes are seen from hence but partially, and in truth appear only as a drop of water, to the vast ocean in view: while the mountains which encompass them, compared with Mangerton itself, hide their diminished heads, declining all rivality. Taken together, tho’ far inferior even to the maritime Alps in grandeur, and as much to the mountains in Switzerland, and the Esterelles in Provence, in fertility, they exhibit an appearance of nature so uncommon, as must furnish the best informed fancy with new, and picturesque images.

And now, traveller, having satisfied thy curiosity, plod thy way downwards; for the clouds begin to marshal, the vapours to accumulate, and soon will the scene thou gazest at vanish, and the spot where thou standest become the seat of darkness; unless thou indeed wouldest inhabit the clouds, and _sensibly experience_ that palpable Obscure, which thou hast only _read of_ in Milton.

The most desirable view of the upper lake is from the East, on the cliffs of Crom-a-glaun, or Bolinendra (7). The islands, and mountains, are seen from hence in a very happy arrangement; and there is a certain air of wildness in the prospect, which borders on the romantic.

These are some of the views from the banks, and eminences, in the neighbourhood of the lakes, that appeared to me the most pleasing. Those from the lake itself, though not so extensive, are no less beautiful; but they are so numerous, and it is so difficult to convey an adequate idea of their nice varieties, and differences, that I shall barely hint at one or two in the most distinguished classes.

Turk, when viewed from the lake below (8), has some pretensions to grandeur: it rises to a respectable height, fills the eye with an unbroken surface of two miles in extent, and is one great and uniform object: but greatness is a relative term, and that degree of it we speak of, is rather calculated to give the mind a certain taste of grandeur, than to satisfy it with a complete idea.

From the river immediately beneath (9), the rugged appearance of the Eagles Nest inspires surprise, and awe; but the sportive hand of Nature has so managed it, that these feelings never border upon that anxious uneasiness which attends the contemplation of objects properly speaking terrible.

From the upper lake between Arbutea, and Rossburkree (10), the western isles are seen at a due distance, and appear to great advantage. The eye is confined on each side by two uniform risings, and the back ground of the picture is occupied by the amphitheatre of mountains which encompasses the western valley. There is a beauty in the islands, a wildness in the mountains, and a magnificence in the air of the whole prospect, which not only amuses the mind, but seems to exalt and expand it, and awakens such sentiments as one feels from a sublime passage in Homer or Milton.

The effect of many of these views is, in my opinion, much heightened by the hourly revolutions in the face of the heavens. The vast volumes of clouds, which are rolled together from the Atlantic, and rest on the summits of the mountains, cloath them with majesty: the different masses of light and shade, traversing the lakes in succession, as the shifting bodies above float across them, exhibit all the varieties of night, and day, almost at the same instant: the mists interposing their dull, yet transparent coverings to the view, raise new desires of a fuller, and clearer prospect: and the wandering vapours flitting from cliff to cliff, as if in search of the clouds from which they have been separated, amuse the eye with their varieties, and irregular motions.

After all, this happy spot labours under one disadvantage, and one too I am the more averse to mention, since so celebrated a writer as Doctor Johnson has thought it sufficient, in the case of Loch Lomond, to counterbalance so many natural beauties; and this is no other than the immense rains; which fall here more abundantly, and that even in the best seasons for visiting the lake, than in all other parts of the kingdom. But surely Philosophy will suggest many topics to quiet our complainings on this head. She will tell us, that to expect perfection in things sublunary, is to wish where we cannot hope: that the cup of pleasure, even when presented to us by the pure hand of Benevolence, is never without some unpalatable ingredients: that where Nature has provided us with so rich a repast, where she has displayed such enchanting scenery to the eye, and gratuitously accumulated all this variety of entertainment; we ought to enjoy her bounties, in the time, manner, and circumstances she chooses to exhibit them. But if we should further discover, that the limitations she sets to our pleasures, are necessary to our being pleased at all; that what we call a disadvantage is the spring and source of all we admire; that the Hyades are here the handmaids of Flora; for that without these perpetual effusions of rain we complain of, the rocks must resign their vegetable inhabitants, the rivers mourn their exhausted urns, and the cascades no longer resound save in the dull ear of Memory; that the living lake itself must dwindle into an inconsiderable pool, and the mountains, stript of their honours, become a dreary waste, the abode of gloom and barrenness: In this case, surely, our complaints must be turned to admiration, and our regrets to a grateful acquiescence. Shall we not here exclaim in the spirit of Homer!

With gold-embraided locks, the exulting Seasons Received her from the hands of forming Nature; And round her silver margin did encircle, With never-fading forms, umbrageous hills, Sweet vocal vallies, plains enamel’d o’er With many a flower.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES

[1] Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland.

[2] By the experiment of the barometer, Mangerton was found to be 3060 feet in perpendicular height. But the sudden variations of the state of the air, at considerable heights, in a climate so changeable as ours, seem to require the concurrence of repeated experiments as the basis of admissible conclusions.

[3] I have included the several ranges of mountains which form the shores of this lake, under the name of the most considerable, to avoid multiplying uncouth terms. What I have called Ghirmeen is known by the several denominations of Doogery, Ghirmeen, and Derry-Carnagh: On the opposite side, besides Cahirnee, are Derry-Lishigane, Galloveely, and Derry-Arde: and to the East, under Crom-a-glaun are included, Bolinendra, Derry-Dimna, and Derry-Cannihy.

[4] Vide _Collectanea Hibernica_.