The extraordinary verdure, not only of the isles, but of the mountains, is even more striking viewed from these lonely waters than where man has left more perceptible trace of his presence. It seems incredible that giant fern, tree-shrubs, and plants should flourish in tropical profusion at the great heights to which they attain, and without the artificial aid which is impossible.
This wonderful foliage is the glory of all the islands, but here it throws into intense relief the sublimity inseparable from great mountain scenery, and even in point of height the MacGillicuddy’s Reeks can claim greatness. More than a hundred years ago Holmes, in his Tour in Ireland, records his first glimpse of the noble range: “Their peaks immersed in mist and storms, along their prodigious furrows the cataracts, swollen by recent rains, tumbling with fury and glistening like liquid silver; in a little time the peaks piercing through the clouds, the grey mists slow descending like a great curtain, through which the sun darted his rays.”
AT THE FOOT OF MANGERTON MOUNTAIN, KILLARNEY.
The Purple Mountain, always beautiful and changeful in aspect as the lakes themselves, looks down from the north, while on the other side rises Torc’s noble outline, and further off great Mangerton.
Many of the mountains are densely wooded to a great height—giant ferns, the rowan, holly, yew, juniper. Above all the arbutus grow in a tangle of profusion, and on rocks where no earth appears. How the steep rocks and crags can give root-hold to this forestry of green is a marvel to the beholder, the roots being simply filaments entwining themselves round crevices in the stone, holding on with a grim tenacity which defies the wildest storm—better even than the forest tree. The birds of the air have dropped their seeds, or the winds carried them to this their home, and they will not let it go. Here will they stay as long, perchance, as the rocks themselves.
“I expected the loveliness I met,” said an English visitor to Killarney lately, “and I believe the strongest impression made on me was by those beautiful tropical shrubs in mid-air, as they seemed, and with no apparent hold on the soil.”
The arbutus is supposed by some to have come from Spain and to have been cultivated in the first instance by the early monks; but the more general belief is that it was indigenous. It is not to be found of spontaneous growth nearer to Ireland than the very south of France and Italy, and only as a shrub, while about the lakes and mountains here it often becomes a large and tall tree. Pliny mentions it as extraordinary that it should thus grow in Arabia, and Petra Bellonus also observes this as occurring on Mount Athos in Macedonia. But it seems to love its Irish home best, and to revel in the luxuriant growth which makes it so noticeable in Killarney’s leafy forests.
The blossoms of the arbutus grow in clusters of white bells, not unlike those of the lily of the valley, in great abundance, and nestling under bunches of bright green leaves. It has, at the same time, ripe and green fruit on its branches, first a deep pale yellow, deepening, as it advances to ripeness, then a brilliant scarlet like that of a strawberry. Autumn and winter are the seasons of its greatest bloom and beauty.