O’SULLIVAN’S PUNCHBOWL, KILLARNEY.
A most beautiful cascade at the western end of the lake tumbles down the mountain side and empties itself in a dazzling sheet of foam into its waters. The music of its fall seems very close as the boat passes the various isles, and you are told the legends connected with them. One in particular, MacCarthy’s Island, is pointed out as the last refuge of one of the great family. We will find other memories of this powerful sept in many a local tradition. Here a battle was fought, a fort taken or lost, triumph or defeat, and then you are pointed to a grave—the end of it all!
But on the Upper Lake it is hard to think of anything but the lovely, lonely scenery—lonelier because of the everlasting hills which compass it around.
Eagle Island was once the haunt of these royal birds, and still the golden eagle has not forsaken it, though less seldom seen. Ronayne Island is named after one who lived there, apart from his fellow-men, in self-chosen solitude. At each point there is something to relate, while every turn produces a change in outline or colour so as almost to form a fresh scene. Many a lovely little bay and channel are explored, till too soon the boat passes the last islet, enters the last bay, rounds the last promontory.
A very narrow part of the passage occurs here where this promontory juts out, leaving a breadth of only about thirty feet. It is called Coleman’s Eye. Some legendary person is said to have leaped across the stream here, leaving his footprints on the rock beyond.
And now, with long look and reluctant farewell, we are on the Long Range, the river connecting the Upper with its sister lakes.
In Holmes’ Tour he thus characterizes the Long Range: “I should distinguish the Upper Lake as being the most sublime, the Lower the most beautiful, and Muckross Lake the most picturesque, the winding passage leading to the Upper containing a surprising combination of the three, probably not to be exceeded by any spot in the world.”
The Long Range is about two miles in length. Its margins are gemmed with water-lilies, snowy and golden. Here the Osmunda regalia is seen growing almost in forests, and of great size, its branches, as well as those of the alder, birch, yew, arbutus, and many another, entwining as if they grew from a common root. Other rare ferns, some peculiar to Kerry, as the Brutle fern (Trichomanes speciosum), completely clothe the wild crags on either side. But it is hopeless to attempt specifying the variety of foliage, the different shades of green, the masses of heather and gorse, which in all stages of their bloom, their first spring glory, or the no less lovely golden and brown tints of autumn, make the most rugged mountain sides beautiful. And let not the little “bog down” be forgotten which around Killarney makes the bogs resemble waving fields of snow. “Light of love” the peasant girls call this bog rush, for a breath sends its down floating lightly away. A little white tuft of silky cotton, from its shortness of no practical use in the work-a-day world, so it lives its life unharmed, gay as the bog-land dwellers themselves.