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
We now approach the famous Slieve League, the grandest, the boldest, the
steepest, if not the highest, of all the cliff barriers on the coasts of
these islands, and one of the most remarkable in the known world. It can
be seen from the shore near Sligo, rising almost perpendicularly from the
sea. The cliff-mountains of Achill, colossal as they are, seem to shun the
full fury of the western gales, for they face the north-west; but Slieve
League looks almost due south-west, and thrusts itself out into the ocean
as if to court the most tremendous shock of the Atlantic's billows. It
forms the culminating point of a range of cliffs that are over six miles
in extent, extending from Carrigan Head to Teelin Head, the lowest cliff
of which is over seven hundred feet in height. Slieve League is two
thousand feet high, and almost perpendicular. It is two hundred feet lower
than the highest of the cliff-mountains of Achill, but it is bolder,
nearer being perpendicular, grander, and more rugged than they. Those who
have not been on the sea at the base of Slieve League cannot form a true
idea of its awful grandeur. Its summit is almost as sharp as a knife
blade; and he who could look from the jagged rocks that form its cone down
on to the seething ocean under him without feeling giddy should have a
steady head and strong nerves. Those who go from these islands to Norway
in search of the sublime should first see this king Irish cliff-mountains,
and know how grand and beautiful are the sights that may be seen at home.
The whole of the coast of Donegal is magnificent. There is no other cliff
on it as high or as grand as Slieve League, but there are hundreds of
places along its nearly a hundred miles of iron-bound, storm-beaten coast
that are well worth seeing. It has nothing like Clew Bay, but it has
gigantic cliffs, narrow arms of the sea, some of which are nearly as wild
and as grand as the famous Killary Bay that has already been described.
There may be certain places in the more southern coasts that are finer and
fairer than anything on the coasts of Donegal with the exception of Slieve
League, but for general wildness and cliff scenery there is hardly any
sea-coast county in Ireland can equal it. It has the longest sea loch in
the island on its coast--namely, Loch Swilly. Following its windings from
its mouth to where it begins must be over five and twenty miles. It is a
beautiful lake also, and hardly known at all to tourists, and never can be
known until better means are supplied for seeing it from a steamer on its
waters. The "wild west coast" may be said to end at the mouth of Loch
Swilly. From there eastward it is the northern coast. There is much of the
grand, beautiful, and curious to be seen on the northern coast from
Inishowen to Fair Head, including the celebrated Giant's Causeway, and
"high Dunluce's castle walls." The latter have been already described.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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