A short distance beyond the town, the wooded hill of
Knockomagh, rising to a considerable height, overhangs Lough Hyne, one
of the most beautiful spots in Ireland. Some miles to the westward lies
the pretty island of Sherkin, which with Tullough to the east, makes the
charming little bay of Baltimore completely landlocked. Out in front of
all, like a giant sentinel, stands the island of Cape Clear, breasting
with its defiant strength that vast ocean whose waves foam around it,
lashing its shores, and rushing up its crannied bluffs, still and for
ever to be flung back in shattered spray by those bold and rocky
headlands. The town of Skibbereen consists chiefly of one long main
street, divided into several, by different names. This street is like a
horse-shoe, or rather a boomerang, in shape. Coming to the curve and
turning up the second half of the boomerang, we are almost immediately
in Bridge-street, a name well known in the famine time; not for anything
very peculiar to itself, but because it leads directly to the suburb
known as Bridgetown, in which the poorest inhabitants resided, and where
the famine revelled--hideous, appalling, and triumphant. Bridgetown is
changed now.
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