| What a succession of sublime and varied scenery does this magnificent coast present to the view! Its bold columnar rocks, expanding their gigantic forms along the brink of ocean—here projecting far into the impetuous flood, and there impending over it in haughty and terrific majesty—bid defiance to its rage, as it foams and bellows at their foot in tremendous but impotent fury. But it was not until we arrived at the Promontory of Fairhead, that we were really astounded at the wonders of this mountainous shore. "This headland rises abruptly to six hundred and thirty feet above the level of the sea. It is composed of columnar <br />[p. 8] basalt, huge masses of which, during a course of ages, have fallen down, and lie in tremendous heaps around the base of the cliffs, like the wreck of a former world. The wild aspect of this point is peculiarly striking. Desolation and barrenness are its appropriate characteristics. Nature seems here to have exhausted her powers of devastation, to render this scene the most awful and sublime that imagination can conceive.” </p><p>“Proud, towering o'er the angry main, <br/>Bleak Fairhead frowns in high disdain; <br />And throws aloft his savage front, <br/>As daring heaven's empyreal brunt. <br/>Against his scarr'd and cragged breast <br/>A thousand fractured columns rest; <br/>But not a plant that drinks the air <br/>Relieves their greyness chill and bare. <br/>Beneath, his steady feet sustain <br/>An everlasting hurricane: <br/>For there, in wildest fury frantic, <br/>For ever roars the vast Atlantic." </br>[Footnote] "QUILLINAN'S "Dunluce Castle," a privately-printed poem." <br />[pp. 7-8] |
