That Castle of Dunboy gave its name to Froude's famous romance _The Two Chiefs of Dunboy_--a romance founded on historic fact--perhaps not more coloured in the telling than in the same author's volumes on the history of Ireland. For here in this peninsula between Bantry Bay and the Kenmare River, which was the special hold of the O'Sullivans, clan loyalty and the clan name did not die out. Here as elsewhere, English settlers were brought in as lords of the land, with enormous power over the native Irish, whose loyalty still held to the representative of their old chiefs. The O'Sullivans were chiefs now principally in the extensive smuggling operations--and let it be remembered that under the laws made by England to crush out Irish trade, contraband was almost the one outlet for Irish commerce. If Irishmen wanted to export the wool of their sheep, the hides of their cattle, the meat that they salted, all this traffic was by law forbidden. Such laws make smuggling necessary and beneficent, and the O'Sullivans on the south of the Kenmare River, like the O'Connells on its northern shore, brought in their cargoes of wine, tobacco, silks, and laces, and sent back ships laden with wool. With those cargoes went out too that other contraband, the supply of officers and men for the Irish brigade. The English landlord-settler was the representative of English law, and between him and the O'Sullivans conflict was certain. In 1754, Murtagh Oge O'Sullivan shot the Puxley of that day. Law was moved to great efforts, and two months later the O'Sullivan was surrounded in his house at the village of Eyeries, and, after a desperate resistance, driven out of it by fire: he tried to cut his way out but was shot down in escaping. That was a great day for the law, and they towed O'Sullivan's body by a rope at the stern of a king's ship to Cork, where they cut his head off and spiked it over the city gate. [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO CORK HARBOUR] Irish memory keeps vividly the detail of such events, and you can find men in that district to tell you the whole as if it had happened yesterday. I heard it all, though at secondhand, on a sail from the Kenmare River to Bantry, one night when the sea was all fire, and the mackerel shoals dashing this way and that, made flashes like a Catherine wheel, and porpoises or dolphins following them left long trails of light on the surface with sudden sparkles wherever the great fish came up to roll. Out to sea was the recurring flash of the Bull Light, for which ships steer on their way from America; and though there was no moon I could still distinguish this huge island rock, and its neighbour the Cow. The Calf, where the light used to be, is lower, and lies close in by Dursey Island--in that year much talked of, for a party of police who had crossed to collect rents from the few islanders, were effectively marooned, as the boat they had chartered left them, and every other craft was suddenly spirited away.