The
river at this place is wide and shallow; but, judging from the noble
bridge by which it is spanned, it must be sometimes greatly swollen. The
evening was bright and pleasant; the sun had gone far westward, and the
effect of his light, as it played on the scarcely rippled water, and
shone through the high empty arches of the bridge, standing like open
gateways in the shallow stream, made me pause for a moment, to take in
the whole scene. It was during this time that I discovered, immediately
beyond the river, the object of greatest interest to me--the object, in
fact, of my journey--the churchyard of Abbeystrowry. There was the spot
in which a generation of the people of Skibbereen was buried in a year
and a half! Those places in which poor humanity is laid to rest when
life's work is done have been always regarded as holy ground; cities of
the dead, solemn and suggestive. But this was more; in its lonely
seclusion, in its dark and terrible history, it was exciting in its
impressiveness. In the still sunlit evening, wooed to rest, one could
imagine, by the gentle murmurs of the Ilen, its little clump of gnarled
trees grouped around its scanty ruin was a picture of such complete
repose as to make the most thoughtless reflective.
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