From the
hotel keeper to the beggar all depend on the tourist season.
After all it was something to have passed through between the
Macgillicuddy's Reeks and the purple mountain; something to see water
like spun silver flinging itself from the mountain top in leaps to the
valley below, to struggle up and up to the highest point of the gap and
look back at the serpentine road winding in and out beside small still
lakes through the valley far below. Of course we look into the Black
Lough where St. Patrick imprisoned the last snake. Of course we had
pointed out to us the top of Mangerton, and were told of the devil's
punch bowl up there. Down through the Black Valley we came to the point
where the boats waited for us, leaving the black rocks, the bare
mountains, the poor little patches of tillage, the miserable huts and
the multitudinous vendors of goat's milk and poteen behind. To our
surprise the way to the boats was barred by a gate, and at the gate
stood a man of Mr. Herbert's to receive a shilling for each passenger
before they could pass to the boats. "He makes a good thing out of it,"
remarked the boatmen. I do not know how many more fees are to be paid
for a look about the lakes of Killarney, but this gate, Torc Cascade and
Muckross Abbey cost each tourist two shillings and sixpence to look at
them.
The upper lake is beautiful, fenced around by mountains of every size
and variety of appearance. Of course they are the same mountains you
have been seeing all day, but seen from a different standpoint. The
Eagle's Nest towers up like an attenuated pyramid, partly clothed with
trees, and is grand enough and high enough for the eagles to build on
its summit, which they do. Here were men stationed to wake the echoes
with the bugle. As our boat swept round, recognizing that we had not
employed them, they ceased the strain until we passed, but the echoes
followed us and insisted on being heard.
There are many, many spots on the Upper Ottawa as fair and as romantic
as the Lakes of Killarney, and they are very lovely. The trees on the
islands have a variety that do not grow in our Canada, principally the
glossy-leaved arbutus. From the upper lake we slid down a baby rapid
under an old bridge - built by the Danes of course, the arch formed as
the arches of the castles in the west - into the middle lake.
The day had been one of dim showers, but in the middle lake the sun
streamed out and touched the peak of the purple mountain and all the
mountain sides and woody islands with splendor, that streamed down in
golden shafts along the rain that was falling on some, and chased for a
moment the shadows that lay on others.
