Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 2: Great Britain and Ireland, Part 2
General
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 2: Great Britain and Ireland, Part 2
Great Britain -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Description and travel
Drumming and trumpeting was heard at a little distance, and presently we
found ourselves in the midst of a fleet of boats upon the rocky shores
of the beautiful little Innisfallen. Here we landed for a while, and the
weather clearing up, allowed us to see this charming spot. Rocks,
shrubs, and little abrupt rises and falls of ground, covered with the
brightest emerald grass; a beautiful little ruin of a Saxon chapel,
lying gentle, delicate, and plaintive on the shore; some noble trees
round about it, and beyond, presently, the tower of Ross Castle, island
after island appearing in the clearing sunshine, and the huge hills
throwing their misty veils off, and wearing their noble robes of purple.
The boats' crews were grouped about the place, and one large barge
especially had landed some sixty people, being the Temperance band, with
its drums, trumpets, and wives. They were marshaled by a grave old
gentleman with a white waistcoat and queue, a silver medal decorating
one side of his coat, and a brass heart reposing on the other flap. The
horns performed some Irish airs prettily; and, at length, at the
instigation of a fellow who went swaggering about with a pair of
whirling drumsticks, all formed together, and played "Garryowen"--the
active drum of course most dreadfully out of time.
Having strolled about the island for a quarter of an hour, it became
time to take to the boats again, and we were rowed over to the wood
opposite Sullivan's cascade, where the hounds had been laid in in the
morning, and the stag was expected to take water. Fifty or sixty men are
employed on the mountain to drive the stag lakeward, should he be
inclined to break away; and the sport generally ends by the stag, a wild
one, making for the water with the pack swimming afterward; and here he
is taken and disposed of, how I know not. It is rather a parade than a
stag-hunt; but, with all the boats around and the noble view, must be a
fine thing to see.
Some scores more boats were there, darting up and down in the pretty,
busy waters. Here came a Cambridge boat; and where, indeed, will not the
gentlemen of that renowned University be found? Yonder were the dandy
dragoons, stiff, silent, slim, faultlessly appointed, solemnly puffing
cigars. Every now and then a hound would he heard in the wood, whereon
numbers of voices, right and left, would begin to yell in
chorus--Hurroo! Hoop! Yow--yow--yow! in accents the most shrill or the
most melancholious. Meanwhile the sun had had enough of the sport, the
mountains put on their veils again, the islands retreated into the mist,
the word went through the fleet to spread all umbrellas, and ladies took
shares of mackintoshes and disappeared under the flaps of silk cloaks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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