When I pass a city like Belfast without notice, it is not that there is not much of interest there, but that it has been so often described, and I would confine these notes to those more unfamiliar spots with which Ireland abounds, places of which the general run of travellers knows nothing. Yet Belfast, like its great neighbour Glasgow, possesses much of interest of which the guide-books make no note.
Leaving the busy city of the north, our route lies towards the sea and by the sea for some hours, the roads all very good. We pass Carrickfergus and Larne and on the shores of Ballygalley Bay, coming to a sudden stoppage, discover on investigation that our stupid chauffeur has allowed the gasoline to run out. What to do is a problem, as we are some miles from any town and the road is a lonely one. To assist in a solution of the question Boyse goes to sleep in the motor and I go out on a lonely rock at sea where O'Halloran, that most renowned outlaw in Irish history, built his tower,—all in ruins now. For ten years he kept all this district in subjection and was killed in 1681.
There is but little left of his stronghold here—an angle of a tower, an outline of a wall or two,—all on a tiny island around which murmur the waters of the Irish Sea, while far out, seemingly afloat, in the hazy distance rise the shadowy shores of Scotland. That is Cantyre and Arran over yonder. There are no sails in sight and the sea is asleep. The high-road winds away close down by the shore on either hand, while high behind it the fantastic cliffs tower some three hundred feet and more, wild and desolate. To have passed this way in the days of O'Halloran, without paying heavy tribute, if he allowed you to go at all, would have been well-nigh impossible, and our further progress, unless that petrol comes, is as effectively prohibited.
Photo by W. Leonard
The Tomb of St. Patrick