POLA-PHUCA CASCADE. 55 



were picked up some miles below in very small pieces, bruised, torn and 

 shivered. There were two bears and some other animals on board of her, 

 but the bears seem to have had misgivings of the safety of the voyage, 

 and therefore when she sprang a leak and floated stern foremost they 

 stepped overboard, and with much difficulty succeeded in swimming 

 ashore, after having been carried half-way down towards the main 

 cataract by the rapidity of the current. No trace of the smaller animals 

 was ever discovered. It is the opinion of those who have been long 

 resident near the cataract, that not even the different sorts of fish that 

 happen to be forced down the falls ever escape with life, and in corrobora- 

 tion of this, numerous dead fish are daily seen below the gulf; wild fowl, 

 too, unmindful of their danger, or floated down while they are asleep, 

 never escape destruction if once driven within the verge of the main 

 cataract. 



POLA-PHUCA CASCADE COUNTY OF WICKLOW. 



In no part of the United Kingdom is there so many beautiful objects of 

 natural scenery in a small space as in the county of Wicklow, which 

 adjoins the city of Dublin, and none more so than those of Bray, 

 Inneskerry, the Dargle, and 



" The vale of Avoca where the bright waters meet." 



Of the three water falls, Pola-Phuca is the most striking and remarkable. 

 The Dargle is not properly a water fall, though the citizens of Dublin are 

 pleased to call it so. Powerscourt cascade descends from a vast height 

 (and the view, with Grattan's house in the distance, is truly beautiful), 

 but the stream of water is inconsiderable, except during or immediately 

 after wet weather ; in dry weather it has the appearance at a short 

 distance, of a fine silver thread gliding down the face of a steep rock. 

 Pola-Phuca, or, as it is sometimes written, Poulia-Phouka, is formed by 

 the descent of the waters of the Liffey, a considerable stream, which in 

 leaping down several progressive ledges of rocks, brawls and foams till the 

 precipitated waters form a vortex below of great depth, and is supposed 

 by the peasantry to be unfathomable. Pola-Phuca is understood to 

 signify Pucks or the Devil's hole, a very expressive term, suggested by 

 the whirpool. It is not far from Rossborough, on the left of the road 

 leading from Blessington to Balymore, and is one of the great attractions 

 of the good citizens of Dublin, and all visitors to that part of "Erin's 

 green isle." There is a bridge higher up the river, which contrasts 

 strongly with the masses of rock, and increases greatly the picturesque 

 effect. 



