Omaha daily bee., 1888-11-04

are backed in every direction by higher
peaks and still more romantic settings,
the scenery OF these two bays is simply
matchless nj Ireland or any other land
in which l have wandered. The great
Horn Head at the southern extremity
of Sheep Haven is. alone worth the risk
Of any discomfort or danger to- see One
of its impressive natural phenomena,
reminding of ii miniature of the same
known as the "Spouting Rock, at New
port. has a wonderful charm OF dread
about it. 1t is called MacSwine,s Gun.
The frequent tremendous assaults OF
the ocean through the ages has actually
bored into the seaward. or northwest
face of the promontory a gigantic tun-
mel as perfect and spheroid as within
the power of most skillful engineers TO
form. BY some singular coincide nee" ="
or indeed from the drill-power of the
driven water itself, another bore,
or hollow well has been forced upward
through the headland. or from some
other cause downward through its rock,
at an exact right-angle to the horizon
tai tunnel. When the elements are at
battle of this coast, the sea drives its
mighty swells with such fury into this
tunnel, or gun" that the water is shot
in cOlumnar shaft OF immense volume
from two hundred to three hundred feet
above the headland. boremouth, like
the Iceland geiser, and with report
far exceeding. the detonation of the
loudest cannon: 1t is asserted that
these reports have been heard at Lon
donderry, in an airline thirty miles
away. They are surely audible under
certain atmospheric conditions over
the entire Donegal Highlands: and the
simple peasantry of these mountain dis
tricts crouch beside their ingle-nooks
in superstititious awe when the awful
storms are on, and MacSwine's dread
Gun is booming. Immeasurably more
eerie are the legends and super
stitions its terror has invoked
than those which Irving caught
from the .owly Dutch of the Kaats-
kills; and the marvel is that no Irish
born Irving has arisen to preserve these
witchingly enhancing, gentle and
grewsome hobgobl ins of this wondrous
Donegal mountain region.
So grand an impression had l made
upon my good skipper by my triumphn
over the coast-guards-the possession of
the majestic passport being in his sim
pie eyes as good as patent to a Done
gal barony over the queens own 81 gn-
manuelthat | had no difficulty in per-
suading him to sail to, and around Tory
island, the Thor-Eye OF the ancient
Scandinavians, consecrated to Thor
their deity who presided over desolate
and storm-swept places. 1t is situated
about seven miles off the mainland and
is the first land to be sighted from
! America on the northwest Irish coast.
About three miles in length, and one in
width, its southeast point is kown as
| Port Doom while its northwest headland
extremity is surmounted by lofty
| lighthouse, 122 feet above the sea, The
northern coast faces the sea with line
of cliffs almost as smooth in their face
| as, and of the color of, cast-iron: while
| opposite, to the south, the shores are
| low and fiat. In the valleys above, are
| the tiny hamlets of East Town and
| West Town.. and the entire population
| of perhaps 900 souls live in a semi
| barbarous, though soddenly simple,
state, and utterly ignorant that their
| own tiny ocean peak is not the whole
| boundless earth. Among the women
| we saw, were some tremendous figures;
but they possessed little of the facial
fury so striking among some of the fish
ers' wives of the northern lOughs and
coasts. Not hundred of these strange
beings, men or women, ever were so far
| from home as the Irish mainland, seven
miles away. Their dialect preserves
many of the bold and bardic SMILES of
the ancient Danes. 1t would be cur
ious, but difficult, to trace the origin of
such a people. They are bilingual, as
| indeed are most Of the folk of wild
| Donegal contiguous to them: but
their English has little Irish flavor;
and their Irish has less of pure Gaelic
than of Scandinavian. Tradition re-
lates much OF absorbing interest -e-
| gardng this bit Of rock and soil. 1t
was certainly the home of the Fomorian
mains are still found of fOrtresses used
kings, fully two thousand years ago,
and there are well-preserved, though
| neglected, relics of a later ecclesiastic
era of great impressiveness, which in
| clude crosses, round-tOwer, and
ancient structures for the earliest and
rudest monastic uses. OF Il still later
date are a round-tower and church,
built by St. COlumbkill in the sixth
century, to which is attached an ancient
churchyard, where are inferred many
OF the saints followers. The supersti-
newly dead have the presumption to
inter a body IN this churchyard, =,
on the following night the
desecrating object would be vi
olently whisked away in impalpable
shreds into utter oblivion. 1t was at
Tory Island that, in 1856 A. NJ, the de-
scendants of Nemedius---who arrived
with 1000 followers from southeastern
Europe 200 years earlier, and who were
nearly all destroyed by pestilence on
the island of rdNeimhidh, now Bar
rymore Island, near Cork---came, at
tackled and demolished the principal
Fomorian stronghold called Tor-Co-
nainn, or Conang's Tower. But that
subject is too lengthy one to dwell
upon from the deck of so small an Irish
coaster, and so we set sail for the
Innishbotfin Islands toward the gentler
south.
These comprise group of islets OF
great beauty and picturesqueness at the
entrance to wild Guilldore Bay, where
none but fishermen live; and from here
until we passed the grand promontory
of Bloody Foreland, and came abreas,
of the Island of Arran, or Arran-
more, we were constantly in
sight of an indescribably beautiful
island or mainland shore, and il
company with the quaint and grotesque
yawls and curraghs of the west coas,
fishermen. Arran island-which should
not be confounded with the important
island of Galway bay-as seen from the