Bantry Bay, County Cork

J. Stirling Coyne & N. P. Willis
c. 1841
Volume I, Chapter I-10 | Start of chapter

BANTRY BAY has so often formed the subject of the tourist's pen, that little has been left to me to describe. Viewed from Knuck-na-fiach, a favourable point on the mountains, it presents to the eye an expanse of land and water, a panorama of bold and magnificent scenery, not perhaps to be equalled in the world. Overwhelmed by the novelty and immensity of the objects by which the stranger finds himself surrounded, his eye wanders from point to point of the vast picture with a painfully pleasurable distraction; now resting upon the placid surface of that island-studded bay, within whose capacious bosom the navies of England might ride in safety: now vainly straining to reach the dimly defined horizon of the more distant

"World of waters wide and deep;"

now wandering along the graceful and picturesque shores of the bay, or following the bold outlines of the hills and mountain-ranges, that sweep almost around this noble haven.