MOUNTAINEERING IN IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 6, 7 November 1890, Page 25

MOUNTAINEERING IN IRELAND.

• (From the Pall Mall Gazette.')

CARNTUAL, the highest peak of the Macgillicuddy Reek a, it the monarch of Irish mountains, but they did uot crown him long ago. Uutil lately he was an uncrowued king, his supremacy having, it is Siid,only bean established over bis rivals, especially Mangerton, by the Saxon when the Ordnance Survey was made. As, howtver, Carntual is 6§B feet higher tnan Mangerton, Carntual being 3,4l 4 feet and Mangerton 2,756 feet, we are ratner disposed to think that the native laziness of the Killamey gui c made him say Mangerton was the hitchi-st because it was ihe nearest and easiest of access and asewnt rathar than because he really believed iv its supeiiority. There is no' doubt, however, that Uarntual is infinitely Buperior in everything bat easiness of access from Killarney to ah tha peaks that crown the watery glade wf the Upper Like of Killarney. Bat the monarch doesDOt display himself to advantage from the lake, whence be is most often and easily visible. Like the politic*! king of Ireland, he is of a retiring and seclusive disposition, and only reveals himself to those who seek him ia mora iutim -re acquaintauoe. Seen from the Upper Lake, he is only a fi >er and nurd eminent bump at tha end of a huge humpy ridge that rises at one end of the Bi*ck Valley. But seen from the ro*d, ab ut eight or nine miles west of Killarney, he looks a magnificent, twin-peaked mountain, precipitous and jaggededged worthy to ra .k with the gloriesof 'ateep Loch-na-gar,'or Suoffdon as seen from Portmadoc. It is from this that the ascent should be made. It is a most striking expedition altogether. You drive out along the shores of ;he Lower Lake of Khlarciey, with its soft and syivan scenery, aud cross the River Liune, spirsling along it 9 rocky bed. Leaving the main road, you gradually desert the fertile and green valley, which anywhere but in Ireland would look the chosen home of peace and prosperity, but which, being in Ireland, '"• frequently marred and seamed with abandoned houses, and cottages with large holes iv wall or roof, making one thiuk they have recently been bombarded by some savage enemy ignorant of the rales of war, though they are iv truth merely the marks of tue fostering hand of the landlord tenderly caring for his own. Aa the country geis more wild and mountainous the road dwindles dowa till i becomes a track, and finally ceases altogether in a glen, brightened by a tinkling trout stream. Here you take to your legs and walk along a shady path till you come on the open moor, by twin lakes whose black deeps remind the sentimental traveller of eyes 'de^p^r than the depths of water still'd at even.' Beyond the lakes a jagged slope on the right leads to thu highest peak. Straight in front is a ridge, up which a 8 eep couloir forms the best mode of ascent. Towards the top it looks quite perpendicular. Bui in fact a good path with plenty of rocks and stuff, zu angreifLin, such as the Swiss guide loves, conducts you hand over hand to the top of the ridge. An easy slope then takes you to the summit. Comparisons are nowhere so odious as in scenery and mountain' views. Whether, thertfore, the view lrom the top exceeds in beauty tint from the Matterhorn or Snowdon or Helvellyn we will not dispute. But th»t it is magnificent and unique in its magnificence we will maintain. The peculiar charm of u,aa in the case of Cider Idris, ia its ueamess to the sea. But while from Gader Idris you ses only widesweeps of bay, from Oarntual,noitb, west and south, theeyeiscaugot, if you are fortunate in a .-unny day, by thespirkleof blue water as it ruoa into tb'j long narrow clefts that give their chaim to the coast of Kerry The Dingle Mountains, and below them Dingle Bay, then the ia et of the Kenmare River, Ban try Bay, and many another, each with its chain of mountains gradually dropping off in a succession of islands to the illimitable depths of the Alantic. Nor if yon are less lucky in your weather (*s probably happens) is the effect less striking, for the wiad driving tne mists before it altern*tely conceals anl reveals the glimpses of the steely sea, caught between the ragged clouds and the jagg d hills. Only you miss on the other side the blue w iters of the Upper Lake of Kilia-ney nestled in its encircling mountains, and the loag vista of the Black Valley dropping down to it. This is the way by which you return, following right away to the Lower Lake the manifest track of the Great Carntual Glacier. Tou descend the mountain by a steep elope, down which you go at a long trot, with a

itont slick alpenstock fishion, behind you, and in three quarters of an hour find yourself on the shore of a mountain taro. This spills itself over into tbe Black ValUy by a stream that makes a striking waterfall pouring down a triune stream over a sheer black wall at perpendicular rock. Another thirty minutes brings you on to the level road which runs along the Cummeen Duff lakes, and so to tbe mouth of the Gap of Danlo, where you meet tbe daily round of tourists and the persistent plague of the potheen-purveyors, and their swarms of pretty bare-1 gged beggars. Out oi this stony, boggy mountainglen tbe road drops suddenly into tbe park- like valley ot the Gearha. meen Biver. At the mouth •! it you have tbe privilege of paying a •hilling to an Irish landlord (or bis creditors) for walking over fifty yards or so of his land to the Upper Lake of Killarney. Here, if you are a prudent traveller, a boat awaits you to convey your tired legs in luxury home, through the prettiest lake scenery ia the world. Otherwise, as happened to this present writer, you will probably be overtaken by the dark, stumbling over stoney paths through the wood by the side of the lake, will lose your way, and consider yonrself fortunate if midnight sees a faded remnant of your former self totteriog into your hotel. For the more enterprising person who does not limit himself to the beaten track, a more interesting ascent of Carutual is from the Olencar hotel, a well-known, if somewhat dingy, resort of sa'monfishers, on the Carragh River, a short distance above tbe Carragh Like, south-west of the Reeks. A couple of miles' walk over a grassy, heathery path brings you to Coose, or Acoose, Lake, swarming with trout. Thence a succession of terraces, lakes, and waterfalls brings yon to the final lakes, in a narrow glen, surrounded on three sides by precipitous crags. Here you can get a steep band-over-haod climb up a ridge of < hog's teeth,' as the Irish impolitely call most jagged ridges, raced, possibly, by a half -wild goat to the top. You can go down by a different though similar route, and yet reach the hotel again— if you have started in reasonable time, that is by halfpast nine o'clock — for afternoon tea.

The charm of this way especially, though, indeed, it is the charm of Oarntual in general, is that from the moment that you get on the slopes of the mountain you are far from the madding crowd that infests Snowdon and some other mountains. If you cannot say with Dr. Ball ' that no sound was heard but the shrill cry of tbe marmot or the tbnnder of the avalanche,' you at all events enjoy a silence and solitude broken only at intervals by the voice of a bird or goat, or the ramble of a falling stone.