| ON looking around, the sensation of curiosity is combined with astonishment and delight. Before you is the Causeway, which consists of three piers or moles, denominated the Little, Middle, and Great, each jutting out into the sea, the greater mole being visible to the extent of upwards 300 yards at low water; the others not over half that distance. The annexed East View, gives a correct idea of the gradually diminishing line, from the upper part of the Causeway, to the extreme end, where it dips into the ocean and is, as it were, cut off by a mass of rock, quite different in its nature; between the Causeway and this rock, the water is upwards of ten fathoms deep. The rocks in the back ground are the Steucan (before mentioned), and in the front is that part called the Giant’s Loom, a colonnade of thirty-two feet in height, of basaltic pillars, one of which is composed of thirty-eight joints. Upon the side of the hill and distant in the West View is the Giants Organ, a magnificent colonade of pillars laid open, as it were, by a landslip, in the centre of the cliff, and reaching to the height of one hundred and twenty feet. Farther round towards the South, are the [“]Chimney tops,” three pillars, about forty feet in height, standing upon an isolated rock, some distance from the cliff, and deriving their name from having been mistaken by one of the ships of the Spanish Armada, whose crew during the night battered them, mistaking them for the chimney tops of Dunluce Castle. Much time may be agreeably spent in walking over the Causeway. The Guides will point out the singularities, and the different names of the places as settled by tradition, or later authority, and try to convince you that the different peculiarities of this neighbourhood, have been the manufacture of Giants, who originally designed them for their special use and accommodation. [p. 38] |
