n seems to fear to enter the desolate, sterile places in
the throat of the Gap. Where the river widens, at Cushvalley Lough, the
industrious echo-makers most usually greet the visitor. One has scarcely
recovered from the warmth of their courteous welcome, when some
suggestive volunteer, aborigine to the place, with a "Mr. Bugler, God
spare you your wind," secures their services; although you do not call
the tune, you are expected to pay the musicians. But the trifle spent
on the gunpowder for their cannons, or the breath from their lungs, is
well repaid by the mighty mass of air they start into waves of music.
Here, too, the "auxiliary forces," or pony boys, besiege us with their
sure-footed, shaggy "coppaleens." They have come galloping down the pass
at break-neck speed to lend us the assistance of their light cavalry.
Wonderful creatures they are, these horses and riders. The peasant boys
are for all the world the modern prototypes of those "rake-helly horse
boys" of Queen Elizabeth's reign, who filled so many pages of the State
papers. Sinew and muscle knit their loose limbs together, and, in their
eyes, mild and calm as those of the quiet cattle in the field, but like
the surface of their native lakes, covering unfathomed depths, they
conceal souls swept by deep thoughts, and minds clouded by many
memories. The long unrenewed, but still to be distinguished, Spanish
strain is shown in many of their olive-tinted faces and dark features.
But guides safe, and true, and courteous are they, who know every perch
of the dark Pass, where at times the craggy cliffs shut out the canopy
of the sky, and attempt to precipitate themselves across the track. The
point where the path is narrowest, the peasants have called the "Pike."
From it onward the mountains begin to recede, and the Pass is more open
until, crossing a shoulder of the ~Purple Mountain~ past the three great
expansions of the Commeen Thomeen Lakes, into which St. Patrick is said
to have driven the last serpent, we suddenly come on a surprising
spectacle of magnificent scenery. Here, from the head of the Gap, we see
the Upper Lake spread beneath, to the west, Coomeenduff, or the Black
Valley, dark as the valley of the shadow of death, in charming contrast
with the stern grandeur of the mountains. Their melancholy seems to
reign supreme; the long valley is steeped with shadows in which several
lakes are set, the light upon which only heightens the sublime darkness
of th