Part 41 (1/2)
This line was established in 1883, and so is the oldest electric road in the world; and I judge that it is still using the cars it started out with. At least, the two which composed the train that day were exceedingly primitive; one was open and the other was closed, and you took your choice. We chose the open one, of course, on the side overlooking the sea; and presently we started through the town, a man ringing a bell with one hand and waving a flag with the other, preceding us to make certain the track was clear. The bell, I suppose, is for blind people and the flag for deaf people, and the fact that the man is armed with both proves how thorough the Irish can be when they really put their minds to it.
Although the line has been in operation for thirty years, it is still evidently regarded with fear and wonder by the people who live along it.
Time was when the power was conveyed by means of the ”third rail,” so common in the United States. With us, however, the rail is only used along a guarded right-of-way. Here it was exposed close up by the fence at the roadside, and though it was well out of the way, it was nevertheless stumbled over by many men and beasts, with the usual result. There were many protests, and in the course of fifteen or twenty years, the Board of Trade was moved to investigate.
The evidence at the hearing was most conflicting. The people of the neighbourhood a.s.serted that their lives were in constant danger. The company, on the other hand, claimed that no sober man would ever step on the rail, since to get to it he had to cross the tracks. The people of the neighbourhood protested indignantly against this reflection upon their habits, and asked triumphantly if the horses and cows and other poor beasts that were killed were also drunk. The company retorted that, so far as the horses and cows were concerned, it was the practice of the natives, for miles around, whenever they had an animal about to die, to lead or, if it was unable to walk, to haul it to the railway, and prop it against the fence with a foot on the rail, and then to demand compensation for its death. There was, perhaps, a grain of truth in this; but the board, nevertheless, ordered the company to take up the rail and subst.i.tute an overhead wire for it, and this has been done.
The only way the natives can get damages now is to inveigle a car to run into them, and this is well-nigh impossible, for the cars are run very slowly and carefully, and at every curve there is a signal cabin, where a watchful guard, armed with a red flag and a white one, keeps careful eyes upon the track.
We were just gathering speed outside the town, when we saw in a near-by field an aggregation whose bills had attracted our attention, more than once, in our journeyings about Ireland. It was ”Buff Bill's Circus,” and the picturesqueness of its lithographs had made us most anxious to see it. Here it was, at last, and it consisted of three tiny tents and one van and three or four horses, and five or six people, who at this moment were eating their midday meal, seated on the ground about a sheet-iron stove, while the youngsters of the neighbourhood looked on. I am sorry we did not get to see the show, for I am sure we should have enjoyed it.
Then the road mounted to a terrace high above the sea, and the views over coast and water were superb. The effects of erosion are especially fantastic, and the line pa.s.ses fretted spires, and yawning caverns, and deep gullies and mighty arches, all worn in the chalk and basalt cliffs by the ceaseless action of the waves; and at one place there is a grotesque formation which does indeed, as may be seen from the picture opposite the next page, resemble a ”Giant's Head.”
And there is one most picturesque ruin, for, ten miles out from Portrush, all that is left of Dunluce castle overhangs the sea from the summit of a precipitous rock, separated from the mainland by a deep chasm. The chasm is twenty feet wide, and in days of old there was a drawbridge over it; but the bridge has disappeared, and now there is just an arch of masonry about two feet wide and without protection of any sort. It takes a steady head to cross it, but the Irish are fond of just such breakneck bridges. The castle itself, with its roofless gables and jagged walls, seems a part of the rock on which it is built. It is said to possess a banshee, and one can well believe it!
Dunluce is interesting because it was once a stronghold of the Scotch invaders who succeeded in conquering all this northeast coast of Ireland from here around to Carlingford Lough, away below Belfast. Scotland is only a few miles away across the North Channel--one can see its coast on a clear day from the cliffs above Benmore; and it was natural enough that there should be sailing back and forth. Owen, first lord of Tyrone, brought a wife from Scotland--that Aileach, after whom he named his fortress; and they had many children, one of whom went back to Scotland and became the head of that princedom whose chief afterwards called himself ”Lord of the Isles.” In Ireland, the family was O'Donnell; but in Scotland the members of Clandonnell were not Os but Macs. Angus MacDonnell married a daughter of the great house of O'Cahan, and by this means and by that, the Scotch gradually won a foothold on the Irish coast and built castles up and down it; and finally, in a pitched battle, defeated the Irish who held the land about Dunluce and had built this castle here.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ”GIANT'S HEAD,” NEAR PORTRUSH]
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RUINS OF DUNLUCE CASTLE]
It was besieged and captured after that, once by the Irish under Shane O'Neill, and once by the English under Sir John Perrot; and during the troubled times of the Commonwealth and Restoration fell into ruins and was never restored--partly, no doubt, because it was no longer safe; for one night in 1639, there was a great party in the castle, and a storm arose, and the waves dashed against the rock below it, and suddenly part of the rock gave way and carried the kitchen and eight servants down into the abyss.
Just beyond the castle, the road rounds a point and runs down into the valley of the Bush River, where stands the little town of Bushmills, known all over the world because of the whiskey which is made there; and then it pa.s.ses a great house on a cliff overlooking the sea, Runkerry Castle; and then high up on the slope ahead loom two big hotels, and the tram stops, for this is the Causeway.
Both the hotels at the Causeway are owned by the same man, but each maintains its runner, and each runner makes a lively bid for your custom; and then, when you have made your choice and started toward it, you will suddenly be conscious of a rough voice speaking over your shoulder, and you will turn to find a man striding at your heels, a man unshaven and clad in nondescript clothes; and if you listen very attentively you will presently understand that he is offering to guide you about the Causeway.
Everybody in the vicinity of the Causeway makes his living off the people who visit it, and the favourite profession is that of guide. Now a guide is wholly unnecessary, for a broad road leads directly to the Causeway, and once there it is simply a question of using one's eyes.
But from the persistence of the guides, one would think there was great danger of getting lost, or of falling overboard, or of experiencing some other horrible misfortune, if one ventured there unattended. Every guide carries also in his waistcoat pocket one or more fossils, which he found himself and prizes very highly, but is willing to sell for a small sum, as a personal favour. When his supply is exhausted, he goes and buys some more from the syndicate which s.h.i.+ps them in in quant.i.ty.
For it should be remembered that the Causeway is as strictly organised for profit and as carefully exploited as is Killarney.
As soon as we had arranged for our room, we set off for the Causeway, running the gauntlet of guides posted on both sides of the road. Then a man with a pony-cart wanted to drive us to our destination, and one would have thought, from the way he spoke, that it was a long and trying journey; then we refused three or four offers of fossils and postcards; and finally we found ourselves alone on a road which swept round the edge of a great amphitheatre of cliff; and the face of that cliff is worth examining, for it is formed of the lava flow from some long-extinct crater, and the successive flows, separated by the so-called ochre beds, or strata of dark-red volcanic ash, can be plainly distinguished. The road gradually drops, until it is quite near the sea; and then it pa.s.ses a number of shanties, from which old women issue to waylay the pa.s.ser-by with offers of fossils and post-cards and various curios; and then the visitor is confronted by a high wire fence, beyond which, if he looks closely, he will see a little neck of land running out into the water--and that is the celebrated Giant's Causeway.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY]
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CLIFFS BEYOND THE CAUSEWAY]
It is so small and so seemingly insignificant that Betty and I stared at it through the fence with a distinct shock of disappointment; then we went on to the gate, paid the sixpence which is extorted from every visitor, registered ourselves on the turnstile, and entered.
The misfortune of the Causeway is that its fame is too great. The visitor, expecting to see something magnificent and grandiose, is rather dashed at first to find how small it is; but after a few minutes'
wandering over the queer columns of basalt, this feeling pa.s.ses, and one begins to realise that it is really one of the wonders of the world. I am not going to describe it--every one has seen photographs of it, or if any one hasn't, he will find some opposite this page; and the photographs picture it much better than I can.
There are some forty thousand of the pillars, the guide-book says; five-sided or six-sided for the most part, averaging, I should say, about fifteen inches in diameter, and so close together that a lead pencil is too thick to be thrust between them. The pillars are divided into regular, worm-like segments, some six or eight inches thick, and there are quite a lot of segments lying about, broken off from the columns. The whole bed is said by geologists to be nothing but a lava-flow, which broke up into these columnar shapes when it cooled and contracted.
The native Irish have a far better explanation than that. In the old days, the mighty Finn MacCool, annoyed at the boasting of a Caledonian rival on the hills across the channel, invited him to step over and see which was the better man. And the giant said he would be glad to come over and show Finn a thing or two, if it wasn't for wetting his feet. So Finn, in a rage, built a causeway right over to Scotland, and the Scotch giant came across on it; and of course Finn beat him well (for this is an Irish legend); but with that generosity which has always been characteristic of Irishmen after they have whipped their opponents, he permitted his humbled rival to choose a wife from the many fair girls of the neighbourhood, and to build him a house and settle down; which the Scotch giant was very glad to do; for every one knows that the Scotch women are rough and hard-bitten, also that Scotland is a land of mist and snow, not fair like Ireland, which has always been the loveliest country in the world. And presently, since the causeway wasn't needed any more and impeded navigation, Finn gave it a kick with the foot of him and sunk it in the sea, all but this little end against the Irish coast. And there it stands unto this day to witness if I lie.