st book to
Partholan, who first took possession of Erinn after the Deluge, devoting
the beginning of it to the coming of the Lady Ceasair," &c. And the
Annals of the Four Masters: "Forty days before the Deluge, Ceasair came
to Ireland with fifty girls and three men--Bith, Ladhra, and Fintain
their names."[26] All authorities agree that Partholan was the first who
colonized Ireland after the Flood. His arrival is stated in the
Chronicum Scotorum to have taken place "in the sixtieth year of the age
of Abraham."[27] The Four Masters say: "The age of the world, when
Partholan came into Ireland, 2520 years."[28]

Partholan landed at Inver[29] Scene, now the Kenmare river, accompanied
by his sons, their wives, and a thousand followers. His antecedents are
by no means the most creditable; and we may, perhaps, feel some
satisfaction, that a colony thus founded should have been totally swept
away by pestilence a few hundred years after its establishment.

The Chronicum Scotorum gives the date of his landing thus: "On a Monday,
the 14th of May, he arrived, his companions being eight in number, viz.,
four men and four women." If the kingdom of Desmond were as rich then as
now in natural beauty, a scene of no ordinary splendour must have
greeted the eyes and gladdened the hearts of its first inhabitants. They
had voyaged past the fair and sunny isles of that "tideless sea," the
home of the Phoenician race from the earliest ages. They had escaped the
dangers of the rough Spanish coast, and gazed upon the spot where the
Pillars of Hercules were the beacons of the early mariners. For many
days they had lost sight of land, and, we may believe, had well-nigh
despaired of finding a home in that far isle, to which some strange
impulse had attracted them, or some old tradition--for the world even
then was old enough for legends of the past--had won their thoughts. But
there was a cry of land. The billows dashed in wildly, then as now, from
the coasts of an undiscovered world, and left the same line of white
foam upon Eire's western coast. The magnificent _Inver_ rolled its tide
of beauty between gentle hills and sunny slopes, till it reached what
now is appropriately called Kenmare. The distant Reeks showed their
clear summits in sharp outline, pointing to the summer sky. The
long-backed Mangerton and quaintly-crested Carn Tual were there also;
and, perchance, the Roughty and the Finihe sent their little streams to
swell the noble river b