The Gap of Dunlop, Killarney. Illustrated London News 15 (18 July 1849): 52. Click on image to enlarge it.
"By visiting the ‘Gap of Dunloe,’ and returning in a boat through the Lakes, much of the sylvan beauty, and the savage grandeur of Killarney, may be seen in one day, should the traveller be pressed for time. But, whether his stay be short or long, the first excursion he should make is to this far-famed ‘Gap’ . . . . The Gap of Dunloe, for those who admire the wild, the desolate, the Savage, and the sublime, is the most attractive portion of the scenery of Killarney. From Aghadoe to the entrance of the Gap there is nothing to arrest attention, except the fact that the cave of Dunloe was disco: wered in 1838, and contains some specimens of the wedge-like or angular characters known as the Ogham writing—a species of architectural al phabet, supposed by some authorities to be the most ancient of all the modes of writing that have been employed by mankind. The cave is now closed up, and the tourist must be contented to read an account of it in Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall's very valuable account of Ireland and its scenery. The entrance to the Gap is abrupt and grand. The cleft be tween the mountains is supposed by the peasantry to have been caused by one blow from the weapon of one of the giants of the olden time, and is certainly magnificent enough to exercise a powerful influence over the minds of a much less imaginative people than the Irish. On the right of the winding road, Carrantual and his kindred mountains look down upon the traveller from a height of more than three thousand feet, afford ing no home but to the eagles; while, on the left, the scarcely less ofty peaks of the Purple Mountain and Tomies raise their craggy heads above the clouds. The brawling river, the Loe, which gives name to the Gap, runs through it, expanding twice into gloomy lakes in the middle of the pass” (51).
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Bibliography
“The Lakes of Killarney.” Illustrated London News 15 (18 July 1849): 51-52. Hathi Trust online version of a copy of the Illustrated London News in the University of Michigan Library. Web. 22 June 2021.
Last modified 21 June 2021