This writer further says, the terrible visitation of 1740 and '41 was
the third famine within twenty years; so that in view of these and other
famines, since and before, Ireland might be not inaptly described as the
land of Famines. Almost the first object one sees on sailing into Dublin
Bay is a monument to Famine. This beautiful bay, as far-famed as the Bay
of Naples itself, has often been put in comparison with it. More than
once has it been my lot to witness the tourist on board the Holyhead
packet, coming to Ireland for the first time, straining his eyes towards
the coast, when the rising sun gave a faint blue outline of the Wicklow
mountains, and assured him that he had actually and really before him,
"The Holy Hills of Ireland." Nearer and nearer he comes, and Howth at
one side and Wicklow Head at the other define what he, not unjustly,
regards as the Bay. And surely on a bright clear morning, with just
enough of sunlight, it is as fair a scene as mortal eye can rest on. The
Dublin and Wicklow hills, which at first seemed to rise from the shore,
recede by degrees, and with their undulating graceful outlines, become a
charming background. Wicklow Head drops quietly out of the landscape,
and Howth to the north, and Bray Head to the south, now become the bold
gigantic flanking towers of what is more strictly regarded as Dublin
Bay. The traveller's eyes, beaming with enjoyment, survey the fine
perpendicular rock of Bray Head, with the railway marking a thin line
upon its side nearly midway above the sea, and almost suspended over it.
And then there is that beautiful cone, the Sugarloaf mountain; further
still away, the loftier Djous, overhanging a dark, misty valley, which
marks the spot where the waters of Powerscourt tumble down the rock a
height of three hundred feet; on, on across the Dublin range to
Montpelier, the valley of the Liffey, the city--notable to the
north-west by its dusky-brown atmosphere; then the historic plains of
Clontarf; Howth once again, and the panorama is complete. But he nears