KILLARNEY, IRELAND: by F. J. Dick, M. Inst. C. E., M. Inst. C. E. I.
THOSE who pass hurriedly through the Killarney district know little of its manifold fascination. Even among natives few have thoroughly explored its features. But to one who has made many more or less prolonged visits there, at all seasons, and who has gained a sympathetic interest in its people and in the legends that belong to every rock, islet, and mountain, and who has seen it in storm and sunshine, at dawn and sunset, and by moonlight, the feeling grows that here the immutable decree of Karmic law, "there shall be no more going up and down," during this cycle, never fully descended—that, in fact, this is no part of the ordinary world at all, but something distinct, sacred, set apart for some inscrutable reason and purpose. The very atmosphere of some fairy-world of Light and Day hovers about these Lakes and wooded mountain heights, and seems to penetrate everything. Right in the center, in the very heart of all the beauty, between Dinish Island and Glena, rises the Shee, or Sidhe (Sanskrit Siddhi) Mountain—the mountain of the Fairy World, next to Purple Mountain.
Strange to say, it is just here, too, that the luxuriant vegetation of Killarney seems fairly to run riot, and we find trees and shrubs of tropical character growing side by side with those of temperate and colder climes. Eucalyptus, palm, bamboo, jostle cedar and pine; while the profusion of flowers of all kinds is amazing. And the delicious perfumes of the place, with just a faint suggestion of a turf-fire somewhere a little way off, are something to remember. Some of the Killarney plants belong to what was once an unbroken coast-line extending to Spain. Such are saxifraga umbrosa (London pride), saxifraga geum, arbutus unedo, and pinguicula grandiflora. The arbutus grows in profusion at Killarney, although its real home, in a sense, is among the Pyrenees. Other plants are found along the west coast, which are indigenous to the eastern shores of America.
One thinks of Breasil, and the Isles of the Western Sea, a later geological period than that when there was unbroken, or practically unbroken, connexion between Ireland, Spain, and America. And then one begins to wonder when the links of the past will be more clear.
Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept.
THE OLD WEIR BRIDGE, KILLARNEY