Pleaskin Cliff, County Antrim
Proceeding eastward toward the promontory of Bangore, the traveller comes to the PLEASKIN CLIFF, commonly said to be the most beautiful promontory in the world. The natural basaltic rock here lies immediately under the surface. About twelve feet from the summit, the rock begins to assume a columnar tendency, and is formed into ranges of rudely columnar basalt, in a vertical position, exhibiting the appearance of a grand gallery, whose columns measure sixty feet in height. This basaltic colonnade rests upon a bed of coarse, black, irregular rock, sixty feet thick, abounding in air-holes. Below this coarse stratum is a second range of pillars, forty-five feet high, more accurately columnar, and nearly as accurately formed as the Causeway itself.
The cliff appears as though it had been painted for effect in various shades of green, vermillion, red-ochre, grey lichens, &c.; its general form so beautiful, its storied pillars, tier over tier, so architecturally graceful—its curious and varied stratifications supporting the columnar ranges; here the dark brown amorphous basalt, there the red-ochre, and below that again the slender but distinct lines of wood-coal; all the edges of its different stratifications tastefully varied, by the hand of nature, with grasses, ferns, and rock-plants—in the various strata of which it is composed, sublimity and beauty have been blended together in the most extraordinary manner.