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| CARRICK-A-REDE.-This remarkable rift in the rocks is situated on the coast of the County Antrim, not far from the Giant's Causeway. The name would seem to be divided, like the rock itself, between two derivations-one savant holding that it comes from "Carrig-a-ramhad" -the rock in the road, and another from "Carrig-a-Drochead" -the rock of the bridge. The dark and angry looking chasm is sixty feet wide and eighty feet deep, and is spanned by a flimsy and giddily swaying bridge of ropes. The passage of it, less seldom attempted than even the kissing of the real Blarney Stone, sometimes makes the head of the stoutest hearted swim. But the natives of the region often run across it without a quiver of fear, and laugh at the very visible nervousness of the foreign "tenderfoot." The mechanism of this singular structure is comprised in two strong ropes, stretched from one side of the chasm to the other, and secured to rings firmly stapled in the rocks. Across these cables, planks one foot in width are laid and secured by other ropes. A small "hand rope" completes this perilous passageway, which seems to have no rival in the known world. To add to its terrors, an inlet of the ocean foams and thunders in the saturnine depths below. |
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