The big stages that cross the mountains from Glengariff to Killarney are
chiefly loaded with Americans. It is singular how few other
nationalities are represented in the passenger traffic. The morning we
crossed there were four great vehicles carrying twenty-four persons
each, and every passenger, except one German bridal couple and a funny
acting Englishman, was from the United States. In our coach were
representatives from Cincinnati, Washington, St. Louis, Omaha, Texas,
and Minnesota, and I suppose other sections were equally represented
upon the three other coaches. Everybody who comes to Ireland takes this
ride because it offers the grandest scenery and one of the most
delightful experiences that tourists can enjoy. The coach begins to
climb slowly through the beautiful glen as soon as it leaves the Eccles
Hotel and continues climbing, up and up, for six miles through a dense
forest of glowing green, until it emerges into a wilderness of rock and
moorland, wild, picturesque, and almost entirely uninhabited. There is
very little vegetation, only a few streaks and bunches of grass that
grow along the cracks in the rocky surface, or in wind-carried soil that
has been caught in crevices. It is one of the wildest places you can
imagine, and as we go upward it becomes more so. The stage winds around
the brow of a mountain that seems a solid mass of stone, and as far as
one can see there is nothing else in the universe except a ribbon of
silver that winds at the foot of the slope where we left a river when we
began the journey. One has the sensation of awe that solitude often
produces, but it is disturbed by the chatter of the passengers. It is as
dreary and desolate and lonesome a place as the world contains.
This is a comparatively new road. It was not built until 1838, but, like
all the roads of Ireland, it is solid and perfect and made to last
forever. The old road, and the principal line of communication between
the counties of Cork and Kerry for centuries, ran along the slope of
Hungry Mountain, so called because it is so devoid of vegetation that a
goat would have to take his luncheon if he went up there. And from there
it crossed to the mountain of the "Priest's Leap," which was named from
a legend that grows out of persecution of the Catholics in Cromwell's
time. The driver told it in this way:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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