By some, however, it has been asserted that this remarkable work, of which, to be sure, only fragmentary ruins remain, was a former temple dedicated to the worship of the sun. At any rate, it was evidently a splendid and imposing structure.
Its present appearance is that of a truncated cairn of extraordinary dimensions, which, on closer inspection, proves to be a building constructed with every attention to masonic regularity, both in design and workmanship. A circular wall, of considerable thickness, encloses an area of eighty-two feet in diameter. Judging from the numbers of stones which have fallen off on every side, so as to form, in fact, a sloping glacis of ten or twelve feet broad all around it, this wall must have been of considerable height, probably from ten to twelve feet; but its thickness varies, that portion of it extending from north to south, and embracing the western half of the circle, being but ten or eleven feet, whereas, in the corresponding, or eastern half, the thickness increases to sixteen or seventeen, particularly at the entrance.
One of the inevitable illustrations of the old-time school geographies of our youth was a representation of the “Giant’s Causeway,” with its queer, hassocklike, basaltic stones, built in fantastic forms, like the structures children themselves are wont to erect from their building-blocks.
Next in order come the books of pictorial travel and “table books” of the “wonders of the world,” where the same picture appears again; and, finally, the astute proprietors of ardent spirit which is distilled at Bushmills,—an ancient town of perhaps a thousand inhabitants, between Portrush, Coleraine, and the basalt-bound coast of Northern Ireland,—have covered walls and fences with quite the most pleasing and alluring of all the pictorial representations of this unique rocky formation.
By these various means, the aspect of “The Giant’s Causeway” has become familiar to all. So, too, most people are familiar with the chief characteristics; for which reason it is useless to repeat them in detail here.
It was in the last years of the seventeenth century that this wonderland of nature first attracted the attention of the inquisitive, and from that time on its peculiarities have drawn many thousands of visitors of all ranks, from the mere pleasure and sensation loving tourist of convention to the profound scientist and antiquarian.
The five and six-sided basalt rocks are piled perpendicularly one upon the other, in contrast to most rocky formations, which lie on their sides, and the varying heights of the columns form those significantly named groups known as the “Organ and Pipes,” “Samson’s Ribs,” and the three “Causeways,” the chief of which gives its name to the group.
By those who have delved into the subject, armed with a profound geological knowledge, plummet and line, and rule and level, we are informed that “There is only one triangular pillar throughout the whole extent of the three Causeways. It stands near the east side of the Grand Causeway. There are but three pillars of nine sides; one of them situated in the Honeycomb, and the others not far from the triangular pillar just noticed. The total number having four and eight sides bears but a small proportion to the entire mass of pillars, of which it may be safely computed that ninety-nine out of one hundred have either five, six, or seven sides.”
For a further description, which shall be