On Inisheer are the remains of an ancient place of worship dedicated to St. Cavan, brother to St. Kevin, the legend of whose life everywhere confronts one in County Wicklow. There is another to St. Gobnet, abbess of the sixth century.
CHAPTER VII.
ACHILL TO SLIGO
IT has been suggested before now that the domain of Achill Island, off the coast of Mayo, that wonderland of natural unspoiled grandeur, be preserved as a sort of national park.
Its primitive beauties are impressively great without rising to splendour or magnificence.
Said Sir Harry Johnston, in writing to the London Times:
“Is it impossible that individuals and the State together should intervene before it is too late and save Achill Island as a national park, as a paradise in which the last aspects of the indigenous British fauna may be exhibited? This might be done without disturbing the indigenous population, who could still carry on their fishing industry and the amount of agriculture necessary to their subsistence, without interfering unduly with the wild birds and beasts of the island. There would be, of course, an absolute interdict against ‘sportsmen’ and gunners; it would no longer be permissible to shoot the seals that haunt the caves and rocks around Achill, while the deer, wild goats, foxes, eagles, ravens, swans, gulls, choughs, and other wild birds and beasts would be similarly protected. People would then visit Achill Island at all seasons of the year (the climate is remarkably mild in winter) for the pleasure and interest afforded by the contemplation of its wild fauna. We should, in short, have an object-lesson of what Ireland and most other parts of the British Isles were like under prehistoric conditions.”
From this it will be inferred that there is every encouragement for such a procedure, did the powers but take their rightful initiative.
Whether such an event, if it come to pass, would make for a greater admiration of this lone and sea-girt bit of terra firma, it remains for others than the writer of this book to
