Morning journal and courier., 1889-03-16
AFOOT EN IRELAND.

AFOOT IN IRELAND.
 The Arran Islands on the West Coast
 of IreIand-Desolation Typ1Aed-The
 Punn OF ssColliaheen,'-Remo Pa
 gan Irish Places of Retreat-A RIt of
 Ancient Irish History.
 ARRAN ISLANDS, Ireland, March 4.
 To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 The Arran Islands on the west coast of Ireland possess deep interest to the traveller chiefly for three reasons. They are very wild and picturesque in physical formation, in scenery, and as the resort Of millions of sea- fowl, as with the Skelligs off the southwest coast. Their archaeological remains are the most fascinating and impressive to the stu dent of remotest history to be found in western Europe. And they are inhabited by a race of people whose stubborn clingipg to the bleak spot, whose patience in human misery, whose vacations and character, and whose garb and home life, are beyond ordi- nary explanation, conjecture or description.
 All persons at some period of their lives have comprehended desolation. Nor is this consciousness necessarily one apart from men. have had some experiences of per- sonal nature, and have looked on scenes in travels by land and sea, which at the time seemed to suggest desolation in it's intensest form. But from the moment Conn, the boatman, set me ashore at Killarney from his old curragh, it has seemed to me that any one in search of desolation to depict in man or nature, could find it wholly typifed here. The habitable islands of Arran are three in number, setting across the entrance of the great Bay of Galwsy-uhich should be the European entrepot for swift-going American stesmers-to the northwest, from the migh- ty headlands of Clare; and they show the same limestone formation. Next to Clare is South Sound four miles in width. Then comes Inisheer, the smallest of the gronp, but fourteen hundred acres in area. Foul Sound, but half mile wide, separates Ini- sheer from Inishmaan, the next larger and central island, with an area of possibly twenty five hundred acres. Gregory Sound, the same width as Foul, in turn sepa rates Inishmaan from Arranmore, or Great Arran, whose confines comprise nearly eight thou- sand acres. At some remote time no doubt they were part of 6 continuous ocean bar ring range or band of heights. locking in a great inland lake now outlined by Galway Bay. But this topography suggests the geo. logic surmise that in a far epoch some ele- ment force lifted them out of the sea, partly tilted the mass back to the north, where their edges settled again to the sea's level, and, all along the south shore, where the cliffs rise to mountain height, the uplifted masses broke away from sheer weight; form ing numerous diminutive archipelagoes of half shown savage rocks. The whole north coast line is lifted only few feet above the sea. But the entire surface of the islands gradually rise to these southwest crags, which form an ocean barrier of precipitous mural pinnacled heights of surpassing scenic weirdness and repellant dssolation in calm, and of unparalleled grandeur and sublimity when these pallid walls receive the full fury of the Atlantic in storm.
 have stood at their peaks, almost at the l edge of precipices whose sides fell straight ss plummet to the ocean, when 1t seemed | that the whole Atlantic was rising to enguli them. As far as the eye could reach at seq 1 the ocean was as 8 boiling cauldron; and tc | the right and left to the islands ends fierce l and furious line of spray spumed and seetheo between heights and ocean. The onslaughts I of the sea, the thunderings within the cav erns beneath, the weird whistling of the | blast, the gurgling and roaring of tremen | dous volumes of water tossed into clefts and moving back upon on-coming waves, the | concussion between falling torrents and up | hurled seas, and above all the wild shriekine ] of millions of gannets, sea eagles and puff l fins, plunging deliriousiy about their threat
 ened homes. fill one with an awful fascina tion and dread. Perhaps at no spot upor l the earths surface, save possibly where the ! Atlantic currents meet and battle with ths 1 Arctic currents along the extreme northwes
 Irish coast, is there such illimitable fury be | tween sea and land. At the height of ons
 of these furious struggles pufin dropped | dead where I stood. In its crazy figh among the myriad fowl above it had possi
 bly, been lueklessly struck by another crazec
 bird; for could find no wound upon it. |
 was quite warm; and in the thought tha l came of these unreeorded tragedies of thing in nature, I felt an interest in the puff l which I found warranted by it's relation t.
 these islands and the islanders themselves
 The puffin is the Fratercula arctica of nat
 ural history, and belongs to the auk or AIc
 family of web-footed oceanic birds. It dis
 plays more activity on the wing and in tn
 water than others of the same family. Tn
 bill is enormously developed, is larger thal l pearance of great helmet, corrugated il angles from the front and back rim, to sid
 seams, into which the putin had someho,
 got it's real bill and head wedged, and fror
 which it cannot become disengaged. Thi 1; grotesque seeming is made more apparent b the form and situation of the pufin's legt which compel it when on land to sit ridicr
 lously upright. But it moves under wate with marvellous rapidity. This sea-fowl
 also known upon the west coasts as the SC. parrot; but, from it's sedate appearance an wise, fussy ways, the Arran Islanders call "colliaheen"-old woman; and it is know - by no other name among these people. IT s'colliaheen" is a friend of these starve , folk in many ways. Its habits are sedulou ly studied, for from them all manner B weather changes are known. The brewir z of storms, approach of severe weather, ar , certain promise of milder periods, are pr dicted by the pufans with never failing acc
 racy. Indeed they are an absolutely reliah
 signal service bureau, with no amateur ar
 tic explorer chiefs and no scandalous rivs ries between civilian reporters and militia l. autocrats to disgrace their labors. In tim - of famine they are sought for food; al