57*2 NOTES ON IRISH NATURAL HISTORY. 



found a colony of this bird in a look-out station, built when 

 our government was afflicted with the Napoleonphobia, but 

 now a mass of ruins : these birds did not seem abundant. — 

 Curlews appeared to be breeding here ; their whistle was in- 

 cessant, and the old ones would constantly rise before me, and 

 counterfeit inability to fly, as if desirous of enticing me away 

 from their nests or young. 



The first morning after my arrival in Achill, I walked over 

 the cliffs at Cim to Achill-head. The cliffs at Cim are said 

 to be more than 1000 feet in perpendicular height; Achill- 

 head, the extreme western point, is much lower, I should fan- 

 cy less than 500 feet: but turning thence northward, I reached 

 the summit of Slieve Croaghan, a height more than double 

 that of Cim, and sliced down perpendicularly to the Atlantic. 

 I imagine this cliff has never been measured ; it was variously 

 stated to me at 2000, 2300, and 2600 feet : I am not compe- 

 tent to form an accurate opinion of its height, but as I lay 

 quietly looking over it, I could not hear the huge waves of the 

 Atlantic, as they broke in foam along its base. This might 

 arise in part from the roaring sound of the wind among the 

 rocks around me, or even from the wind sweeping away the 

 sound of the waves in some other direction ; but it gave an 

 idea of vast depth that I never before realized. From this 

 point I coasted the north of the island, and found near the 

 margin of the cliff a beautiful little fresh-water lake, surround- 

 ed by an amphitheatre of hills. I should think its surface 

 was 600 feet above the sea, and its distance from the edge of 

 the cliff scarcely 300. I doubt whether any Englishman but 

 myself has ever seen this lone and beautiful sheet of water ; 

 its singularly round form, the depth of the basin in which it 

 reposes, the. precipitous sides of that basin, its height above 

 the sea, — all these are characters of no ordinary interest. As it 

 was not yet evening, and the weather very fine, I ascended 

 Slieve Mor on my way to the Settlement, an operation of an 

 hour and a half, in order to see the sun set in the ocean from 

 that elevated point. It was a glorious sight, but when he was 

 gone night came on almost immediately, and I had to find 

 my way to the Settlement after nightfall, in a country to which 

 I was an utter stranger, where there was no track, and no tree, 

 house, or any other object to mark the way. 



The next day I walked along the top of the cliff south- 

 ward ; this height is called Menaan ; it is the favourite resort 

 of eagles, hawks, gulls, and red-legged crows. Although 

 magnificent in comparison with any cliffs I have seen in Eng- 

 land, — and although the natives collecting sea- wrack on the 

 sands below were visible only as specks, the nature of which 



