Beauties and Antiquities of Ireland: Being a Tourist's Guide to Its Most Beautiful Scenery & an Archæologist's Manual for Its Most Interesting RuinsRussell, Thomas O'Neill
History
Beauties and Antiquities of Ireland: Being a Tourist's Guide to Its Most Beautiful Scenery & an Archæologist's Manual for Its Most Interesting Ruins
Russell, Thomas O'Neill
Ireland -- Antiquities; Ireland -- Description and travel
It would take at least a week of the longest summer days to see all the
wonders and grandeur of these tremendous cliffs, or rather cliff
mountains, of Achill. In the interior of the island there is not anything
of great interest to be seen, but it has more cliff scenery of the
stupendous sort to boast of than perhaps any other island of its size in
the world.
It is a "far cry" from Achill to Slieve League in Donegal--considerably
over a hundred miles if the coast is followed; but between the giant sea
walls of that island and Slieve League there is nothing of their kind that
will in any way bear comparison with them. There is, however, much
magnificent scenery on the northern coast of Connacht, and also a great
many things of antiquarian interest. There is the extraordinary Druid
remains of Carrowmore, only three miles from Sligo town, where there are
almost, if not quite, half a hundred cromlechs to be seen on about half a
dozen acres. They are of almost all sizes. Some of them are baby
cromlechs, the top stones of which are not much more than a hundredweight.
This place must have been a sort of Stonehenge at one time. In no other
known spot of either these islands or France are so many cromlechs to be
seen in so small a space, and very few seem to know anything about it. Sir
Samuel Ferguson seems to have been the only person who has written
anything about it. But here the same disrespect for monuments of antiquity
that has been so long prevalent all over the country may be noticed. Many
of the cromlechs have been torn down, and some of them have been actually
made to serve as road walls and have been built over. Fully half of them
have been either utterly torn down or in some way mutilated. Their
generally small size has made them an easy prey for those who wanted
stones to build walls or houses. These curious relics of far-back ages
should not be allowed to be any further ruined.
[Illustration: LOCH GILL.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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