a river as the Shannon. On reaching the village of Castleconnel, my first feeling was admiration, my next, surprise, that I should never before have heard of Castleconnell. It is surrounded by every kind of beauty; and after spending a day in its neighbourhood, I began to entertain serious doubts whether even Killarney itself greatly surpassed the scenery around it. Just below the village commence the rapids of the Shannon, of which I had never even heard until I reached Limerick; and these are of themselves well worth a visit. I do not at this moment recollect any example of more attractive river scenery. The wide, deep, clear river is for more than a quarter of a mile, almost a cataract; and this to an English eye must be particularly striking. It is only in the streams and rivulets of England that rapids are found; the larger rivers generally glide smoothly on, without impediments from rocks; the Thames, Trent, Mersey, and Severn, when they lose the character of streams, and become rivers, hold a noiseless course, but the Shannon, larger than all the four, here pours that immense body of water, which above the rapids, is forty feet deep, and three hundred yards wide, through and above a congregation of loose stones and rocks, which extend nearly a mile, and offers not only an unusual scene, but a spectacle approaching much nearer to the sublime than any moderate sized stream can offer even in its highest cascade. None of the Welsh waterfalls, nor the Greisbach in Switzerland, can compare for a moment in grandeur and effect with the rapids of the Shannon." Leaving Castleconnell, we now, as we ascend the river, enter on Loch Derg, an expansion of the Shannon, which boasts considerable scenic interest. "There is," says our excellent guide, "all the variety that can be produced by verdure, wood, and tillage; but the banks are invariably sloping and cultivated, with higher and more sterile elevations rising behind"-byand-by the western side diminishes in interest, but the Tipperary banks are "as full of beauty as wood, lawn, cultivation, and villas can make them." These, too, however, fall off in elevation and culture, as we continue our course towards Portumna, and above this point the picturesque is for many miles lost in the desolate, perhaps in the sublime. "We are navigating in a steam vessel, a river, here a hundred and thirty miles from the sea; and we know it to be navigable a hun dred miles higher. Its volume appears to be as great as when we saw it at Limerick; it is several hundred yards broad, and twenty and thirty feet deep. What a body of water is this! What are the Thames, the Medway, the Mersey, the Severn, the Trent, the Humber, the Tweed, or the Clyde, a hundred and thirty miles from the seu ? I am not sure if they exist at all; or, if any of them do, they are but brawling streams for the minnows to sport in. There is, in fact, something sublime in the spectacle of such a river as this." We now pass the confluence of the Suck, and it would appear that we have placed our umbilicus in a bog, which, having seen it under a dull atmosphere, Mr. Inglis cannot much commend for picturesque effect. The banks, however, improve towards Athlone; but no change from verdant to barren, or from undulating to bog level; or the contrary, that may be presented by the banks, seems to affect the noble river, flowing in majestic equability between. "Notwithstanding that between Athlone and Portumna, (le should have said Portumna and Athlone,) the Shannon receives the two Brusnas, the Suck, and many other smaller tributaries, it appears at Athlone to carry an undiminished volume of water. Above Athlone bridgeupwards of a hundred and fifty miles from the sea-the river is three hundred yards wide, and averages from twenty to thirtyfive feet in depth." Here Mr. Inglis leaves the line of navigation, and turns from the Shannon towards Galway, so that we cannot give his opinion of the river either in its expansions of Loch Ree and Loch Boffin, or in its channel between, until, in the course of his peregrinations meeting the well-known waters again at Carrick-on-Shannon, he finds "that majestic river," which he had parted from a month before, the same noble stream still. "The Shannon, at Carrick, is upwards of two hundred miles from the sea; and I could scarcely discover any diminution of the stream, which flows a hundred miles farther down." One more quotation and we have done "It is particularly worthy of remark," says Mr. Nimmo, "that along the borders of the floetz limestone, there is a se ries of vast caverns usually with subterraneous rivers traversing them." He then proceeds to instance that cavernous district between Loch Corrib and Loch Mask, where the drainage of a country of more than 400 square miles in area, sinks through the caves of Cong to emerge in Loch Corrib. The course of the main drain is however too low to be accessible, and the visitor is disappointed in finding a subterraneous stream only, instead of the torrent which the quantity of water discharged might lead him to expect. Of the inland caves of Ireland, that near Mitchelstown, in the south of the county Tipperary (a position which corresponds perfectly with Mr. Nimmo's general observations,) is the most extensive and celebrated. "The entrance is scarcely wider than sufficient to allow one to get in; but it has been lately somewhat improved. After entering, you partly walk, and partly slide down an inclined plane of about fifty feet in length; and arriving then at the edge of a precipice you de- Dunmore, in the county Kilkenny, is another grand cave, entered by a noble arch in the face of a grassy and precipitous amphitheatre of limestone rock; and at Cloyne, in the county Cork, there is a cavern in the tongue of limestone, which crosses the country there of considerable interest and extent. There are numerous others of more or less interest in Waterford, Kerry, Fermanagh, Cork, and Londonderry. The most remarkable, however, of all the inland caves of Ireland, although apparently not visited by any writing tourist since the year 1740, is that at Kilcorney, in the barony of Burrin, in the north of the county of Clare. Burrin is an extension of the limestone plain, of a very peculiar appearance: • The Angler, with his usual graphic ease, gives a very pleasing description of the interior. "It is much the finest cavern in Great Britain (he seems to consider the three kingdoms a single island); incomparably superior to those in Derbyshire, or Somersetshire, or even M'Alister's cave in the isle of Sky; and is the only one which conveys some faint conception of the magnificent grotto of Adelsberg, which, I believe to be unequalled in the world for extent and beauty. In these her subterraneous palaces, nature has ample scope to indulge her most freakish moods. In one hall she seems to have suspended Brobdignagian icicles from the lofty vault, or to have exposed the roots of some petrified frost. Here she has reared a sequestered chapel, and built an altar, at which a priest is seen officiating, with an alabaster lamp suspended above his head to light his devotions; or there she has spread an ample dinner table, and near it placed various representations of eatables, joints of meat, hams, tongues, bunches of grapes, &c. In another chamber she has turned sculptor, and displays a half-finished statue, while from the adjoining roof depends drapery, whose graceful folds Canova would have been proud to hang round the limbs of a Roman senator. And, lastly, at the hall's farther end appears a mighty cataract, as if about to burst forth and sweep away all these beauteous creations in its resistless Hood." (Angler in Ireland, vol. 2. p. 244.) the bare white rock rises everywhere to the surface, and the only vegetation consists of detached tufts of grass, growing in the crevices. Ludlow, when he entered this part of the county Clare, in 1656, is said to have described it as a country where he could find neither water enough to drown a man, wood enough to hang a man, nor earth enough to bury a man in; and the description holds good of some parts of it to this day. Nevertheless, it is astonishing how well the cattle thrive on their scanty pastures, and where a continuous vegetable soil can be found, the grain grown is of excellent quality. But there is one production, not exactly of the barony of Burrin, but of its coast, which renders the name of the district familiar to the ears of Dublin men: we mean Mr. Burton Bindon's red bank Burrin oysters; an excellent fish, that have contributed more than even the cave of Kilcorney, or the graphic description of General Ludlow himself, to give this district a peculiar interest in our eyes. The cave is, notwithstanding, a very remarkable natural curiosity, being a vault under the limestone crust, accessible only by one small entrance of about two feet in diameter, but not remarkable for any particular beauty or great extent within. There is a tradition in the country, that at certain seasons a troop of fairy horses come out from this cave to pasture on the corn sown in the neighbouring valley, and it is generally believed amongst the country people, that one of these night steeds which was caught by some adventurous individual many hundred years ago, was the sire of the famous breed kept by O'Loghlen; for it must be known that this country is celebrated for a breed of horses, of which our less romantic naturalists trace the de scent from two Spanish sires that were saved out of the wreck on this coast, of one of the ships of the Armada, in 1588. But the peculiar interest of Kilcorney arises neither from its being the fabulous stable of O'Loghlen's fairy stud, nor from its abstract beauty as a simple cave, but from the extraordinary fact that it sometimes pours forth a sudden deluge of insipid muddy water that inundates the surrounding plain to a depth of twenty feet. Now, as there is neither river nor lake in that part of the country, and as the cave is six miles from the sea, this phenomenon, if it continue to exhibit itself as often and remarkably as it did previous to 1740, must be well worth the attention of any scientific man who may have an opportunity of visiting it.* Of the coast-caves, and indeed of all the caves in Ireland, both marine and inland, the first are those of Ballybunnian, near Tarbert, on the south shore of the Shannon, where it enters the Atlantic. The Angler describes them admirably. "They are incomparably the most beautiful marine caves I know of in any country, and in my opinion, are among the most interesting natural objects in Great Britain (he should have said the United Kingdom). Close under the village of Ballybunnian lies a beautiful bay, which at low water affords a great extent of the finest sands possible. The cliffs which compose it on the south are entirely of sand; and on one of the most prominent stands a lofty and very picturesque old tower, once the residence of kings. But the northern side of the bay is bounded by the abrupt and perpendicular termination of the clay-slate rocks which compose the coast for some way northwards, and in which the caves are all situated. These rocks are about one hundred * See Philosophical Transactions, No. 455, p. 360. January 1740. Doctor Smith, the excellent historian of Cork, Kerry, and Waterford, in his collections for the county Clare, (library R. I. Academy,) mentions that periodical lakes are found in other parts of the world. Keysler, in his travels, letter lxxviii, mentions the like in Cirkneitzersee in the Duchy of Carniola; in which it is said, that a person may sow, reap, fish and hunt within the space of one year.-Pike, trout, eels, perch, &c. ascend with the flood; and, what is still more extraordinary, if true, a great number of ducks are often ejected. These fowls, says Keysler, are fat and of a black colour, blind, and almost destitute of feathers; but in a fortnight they become full-fledged, recover their sight, and fly away. We wonder does Kilcorney ever make cod's head of the surrounding country, by deluging it with ejected oysters? VOL. VIII. K feet in height, perfectly perpendicular, and of various and beautiful colours." Here and in the continuation of the cliff which in some places rises to near three hundred feet, the waves of the Atlantic have scooped out the sandy strata which alternate with the slate, and have hollowed the whole face of the cliff into caverns of the most fantastic and beautiful forms. After describing numerous smaller caves, natural arches, and isolated stacks of rock, the Angler proceeds to give an account of the great "Pigeon cave."-" Much as my admiration had been before excited, I must confess I was quite taken by surprise with the extraordinary beauty and grandeur of this most magnificent cavern. We entered it by a spacious portal worn out of the perpendicular face of the cliff, and supported by several huge columns of rock, which closed together in an irregular but most picturesque arch, high over our heads. After a comparatively narrower passage of about forty or fifty yards, the cave swelled out into a dome of the most magnificent proportions, nearly circular in its form, and converging from all sides, so as to form a vast natural cupola. The summit of this splendid canopy of rock, as well as all the further sides, was lost in partial darkness; while from the arched opening by which we had entered, a flood of glorious light pouring in, illumined the various tints and hues that adorned the walls of this ocean grotto. For, as if to make it perfect, the rock was strongly impregnated with sulphur and copper, whose exudations tinged the sides and roof with every imaginable colour, producing a pictorial effect that can hardly be conceived. The water also, though very deep, was of pellucid clearness; exposing here a silvery floor of shell and sand; and there a mimic forest of each kind of sea weed. Staffa is certainly more curious and interesting from its basaltic columns; but, exquisitely beautiful as it confessedly is, even Fingal's cave must, I think, yield to this for beauty if not for grandeur." To enumerate all the other sea caves of interest round a coast worn into such numerous and extensive cavities by the constant force of Atlantic waves would be endless, and with this brilliant description of their chief, both in magnitude and beauty, we will close the section. caves. We have now, we trust, given a pretty full and accurate account of the situation, character, and attractions of the great features of our island, which we have endeavoured to keep as separately as we could under their several heads of mountains, lakes, rivers and We have not intentionally exaggerated their claims on the attention of the lovers of fine scenery, and so far as in our power all such have here an honest account of the sort of entertainment they may expect from the natural features of the country. To tourists there are no helps more indispensable than good guide books; and we are happy to add to the last of those already offered to strangers in Ireland by the spirited publishers of this magazine a new and very highly improved Guide Book to the whole of Ireland; a practical, useful, and valuable work, the compiler of which, sensible of the fact that it is not by the inflated descriptions of such volumes in general, that travellers are induced to visit a country, and that when travellers have made up their minds to visit a district in person, such matter is not only out of place but disagreeable, has wisely and with good taste refrained from swelling his book with any lengthy or extravagant descriptions, but in their place has given a great deal of sound and available information, both local, statistical, and scientific. Much of the material has been furnished from the notes of the admirable Inglis, and we have no doubt the book will prove highly valuable to all persons attracted hither by such charming writings as this lamented gentleman's "Ireland in 1834." Such (so far as in the absence of any general geological or sectional map of the country,* we have been able to collect from the ill-assorted materials at present available by us,) is the general outline of the surface of Ireland; a plain, not very far from circular, of an elevation of from 100 to 300 feet above A deficiency which the publication of Mr. Griffith's geological map will, we trust, shortly and effectually supply. |