BIRDS AND LIGHTHOUSES. 273 



can be shifted, or seaweed gatherers remove their 

 bundles to a place of security. But the danger of 

 this rise is as nought to that of the great oily-look- 

 ing rollers which, though they appear as nothing at 

 a distance, eventually rush thundering over the rocks 

 and shore. They are then a source of great peril 

 to the poor cockle and bait seekers. These folk are 

 chiefly old men and women, who are constantly 

 stooping, seldom turn seaward and pursue their 

 avocation on the verge of the water. But the 

 unaccountable freaks and changes of the ocean on 

 this wild, weird coast of the West are many, with its 

 caves and cliffs, its wonderful and immense hordes 

 of fish, its seals, and its countless fowl. Who have 

 such chances of observing its marvels as the light- 

 house men ? 



Now and again, after a gale of unusual severity, the 

 shore of some bay or portion of the coast will be 

 found strewed with wreckage. Where does this sea- 

 drift come from ? What ship ? How lost ? To 

 no vessel of modern times do these curved, Ber- 

 nicle-perforated timbers and twisted bolts belong. 

 No man living trod her decks. One, perhaps two, 

 generations ago she sank into the quiet green 



of a change, or a ' south-west gale.' " The roaring noise referred to 

 by Smith is nothing more nor less than the " Beal Bar," a sand-bank 

 that stretches a short distance athwart the Shannon near its mouth. 

 With a small ground swell from the Western Ocean, the bar breaks 

 at low water and sends a heavy booming concussion every few 

 seconds, like distant guns of distress echoing along the shore for many 

 miles, but only to be heard in calm fair weather. This "Bar " is most 

 dangerous to a small craft ; I have been becalmed near it, and as the 

 tide fell, mountainous confused waves would suddenly tumble the vessel 

 hither and thither, though the movement of the sea that causes this 

 has previously been almost imperceptible. 



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