“You amaze me!” was all I could say.
Then as we bumped and jolted over the rough by-road Dick Sutherland gave me a rapid but masterly survey of the condition of knowledge on the subject of bogs, with special application to Irish bogs, beginning with such records as those of Giraldus Cambrensis—of Dr. Boate—of Edmund Spenser—from the time of the first invasion when the state of the land was such that, as is recorded, when a spade was driven into the ground a pool of water gathered forthwith. He told me of the extent and nature of the bog-lands—of the means taken to reclaim them, and of his hopes of some heroic measures being ultimately taken by Government to reclaim the vast Bog of Allen which remains as a great evidence of official ineptitude.
“It will be something,” he said, “to redeem the character for indifference to such matters so long established, as when Mr. King wrote two hundred years ago, ‘We live in an Island almost infamous for bogs, and yet, I do not remember, that any one has attempted much concerning them.’” We were close to Knockcalltecrore when he finished his impromptu lecture thus:—
“In fine, we cure bog by both a surgical and a medical process. We drain it so that its mechanical action as a sponge may be stopped, and we put in lime to kill the vital principle of its growth. Without the other, neither process is sufficient; but together, scientific and executive man asserts his dominance.”
“Hear! hear!” said Andy. “Musha, but Docther Wilde himself, Rest his sowl! couldn’t have put it aisier to grip. It’s a purfessionaler the young gintleman is intirely!”
We shortly arrived at the south side of the western slope of the hill, and as Andy took care to inform me, at the end of the boreen leading to the two farms, and close to the head of the Snake’s Pass.
Accordingly, I let Sutherland start on his way to Murdock’s, whilst I myself strolled away to the left, where Andy had pointed out to me, rising over the slope of the intervening spur of the hill, the top of one of the rocks which formed the Snake’s Pass. After a few minutes of climbing up a steep slope, and down a steeper one, I arrived at the place itself.
From the first moment that my eyes lit on it, it seemed to me to be a very remarkable spot, and quite worthy of being taken as the scene of strange stories, for it certainly had something ‘uncanny’ about it.
I stood in a deep valley, or rather bowl, with behind me a remarkably steep slope of green sward, whilst on either hand the sides of the hollow rose steeply—that on the left, down which I had climbed, being by far the steeper and rockier of the two. In front was the Pass itself.
It was a gorge or cleft through a great wall of rock, which rose on the seaside of the promontory formed by the hill. This natural wall, except at the actual Pass itself, rose some fifty or sixty feet over the summit of the slope on either side of the little valley; but right and left of the Pass rose two great masses of rock, like the pillars of a giant gateway. Between these lay the narrow gorge, with its walls of rock rising sheer some two hundred feet. It was about three hundred feet long, and widened slightly outward, being shaped something funnel-wise, and on the inner side was about a hundred feet wide. The floor did not go so far as the flanking rocks, but, at about two-thirds of its length, there was a perpendicular descent, like a groove cut in the rock, running sheer down to the sea, some three hundred feet below, and as far under it as we could see. From the northern of the flanking rocks which formed the Pass the rocky wall ran northwards, completely sheltering the lower lands from the west, and running into a towering rock that rose on the extreme north, and which stood up in jagged peaks something like “The Needles” off the coast of the Isle of Wight.