Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1Stowe, Harriet Beecher
History
Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Europe -- Description and travel
"There is O'Connell's house;" and a warm dispute ensues whether a large
mansion, with a stone chapel by it, answers to that name. At all events
the region looks desolate enough, and they say the natives of it are
almost savages. A passenger remarks, that "O'Connell never really did
any thing for the Irish, but lived on his capacity for exciting their
enthusiasm." Thereupon another expresses great contempt for the Irish
who could be so taken in. Nevertheless, the capability of a
disinterested enthusiasm is, on the whole, a nobler property of a human
being than a shrewd self-interest. I like the Irish all the better for
it.
Now we pass Kinsale lighthouse; there is the spot where the Albion was
wrecked. It is a bare, frowning cliff, with walls of rock rising
perpendicularly out of the sea. Now, to be sure, the sea smiles and
sparkles around the base of it, as gently as if it never could storm;
yet under other skies, and with a fierce south-east wind, how the waves
would pour in here! Woe then to the distressed and rudderless vessel
that drifts towards those fatal rocks! This gives the outmost and
boldest view of the point.
[Illustration: View East of Kinsale.]
The Albion struck just round the left of the point, where the rock rises
perpendicularly out of the sea. I well remember, when a child, of the
newspapers being filled with the dreadful story of the wreck of the ship
Albion--how for hours, rudderless and helpless, they saw themselves
driving with inevitable certainty against these pitiless rocks; and how,
in the last struggle, one human being after another was dashed against
them in helpless agony.
What an infinite deal of misery results from man's helplessness and
ignorance and nature's inflexibility in this one matter of crossing the
ocean! What agonies of prayer there were during all the long hours that
this ship was driving straight on to these fatal rocks, all to no
purpose! It struck and crushed just the same. Surely, without the
revelation of God in Jesus, who could believe in the divine goodness? I
do not wonder the old Greeks so often spoke of their gods as cruel, and
believed the universe was governed by a remorseless and inexorable fate.
Who would come to any other conclusion, except from the pages of the
Bible?
But we have sailed far past Kinsale point. Now blue and shadowy loom up
the distant form of the Youghal Mountains, (pronounced _Yoole_.) The
surface of the water is alive with fishing boats, spreading their white
wings and skimming about like so many moth millers.
About nine o'clock we were crossing the sand bar, which lies at the
mouth of the Mersey River, running up towards Liverpool. Our signal
pennants are fluttering at the mast head, pilot full of energy on one
wheel house, and a man casting the lead on the other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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