which shelves away from him to the south, east,
and west; but to the north the ridge is almost a perpendicular declivity.
On that side the famous golden vale of Limerick and Tipperary spreads a
rich level to the eye, bounded by the mountains of Clare, King's and
Queen's Counties, with the course of the Shannon, for many miles below
Limerick. To the south you look over alternate ridges of mountains,
which rise one beyond another, till in a clear day the eye meets the
ocean near Dungarvan. The mountains of Waterford and Knockmealdown fill
up the space to the south-east. The western is the most extensive view;
for nothing stops the eye till Mangerton and Macgillicuddy Reeks point
out the spot where Killarney's lake calls for a farther excursion. The
prospect extends into eight counties--Cork, Kerry, Waterford, Limerick,
Clare, Queen's, Tipperary, King's.

A little to the west of this proud summit, below it in a very
extraordinary hollow, is a circular lake of two acres, reported to be
unfathomable. The descriptions which I have read of the craters of
exhausted volcanoes leave very little doubt of this being one; and the
conical regularity of the summit of Galtymore speaks the same language.
East of this respectable hill, to use Sir William Hamilton's language, is
a declivity of about one-quarter of a mile, and there Galtybeg rises in a
yet more regular cone; and between the two hills is another lake, which
from its position seems to have been once the crater which threw up
Galtybeg, as the first mentioned was the origin of Galtymore. Beyond the
former hill is a third lake, and east of that another hill; I was told of
a fourth, with another corresponding mountain. It is only the mere
summits of these mountains which rise above the lakes. Speaking of them
below, they may be said to be on the tops of the hills. They are all of
them at the bottom of an almost regularly circular hollow. On the side
next the mountain-top are walls of perpendicular rocks, in regular
strata, and some of them piled on each other, with an appearance of art
rather than nature. In these rocks the eagles, which are seen in numbers
on the Galtees, have their nests. Supposing the mountains to be of
volcanic origin, and these lakes the craters, of which I have not a
doubt, they are objects of the greatest curiosity, for there is an
unusual regularity in every considerable summit having its corresponding
crater. But without this circumstance,