Rathlin Island

“ Judging from the outline of Rathlin, this island must have been originally disparted from the main; and the whole bottom of the sound evinces volcanic action. Nothing can be more broken and irregular than the under surface. At one cast the lead rests at ten, and at the next it reaches thirty fathoms. Beneath, all seems rifted rocks and endless caverns, and easily accounts for the short and bubbling sea that flows above. ”

“ The upper inscription—that of the son of Comgall—is obviously older and contemporaneous with the carving on the stone, which agrees with the early date of his death as recorded in the Irish annals.
At a very early period it appears that Rathlin was one of those islands which was selected as the residence of the first Christian teachers who came to Ireland: and in the Irish annals there is a list of the bishops and abbots of Rathlin, commencing with the name of Segenius, Abbot of Iona, as the first who built and established a church in the island, A.D. 630, although St. ”

“ The people are independent, because they feel they are totally separated from the mainland, and possess neither the means nor the desire to cross over to it. They are in many respects a race by themselves, and their attachment to their little homes of rock is such that one of their severest punishments for offenders is to transport them to Ireland. Such an island is Raghlin, or Rathlin, six miles distant from the north-west of Antrim, but might be six hundred miles, judging by the slight intercourse the handful of inhabitants has with the larger world. ”

“ The wild life of a hunted fugitive may not be borne during the dread winter by the ladies of his company, so he sends them with many a dark foreboding of evil to the care of his brother, and then takes ship for the remote island of Rathlin, off the north Irish coast, where he winters safe from his foes. ”

“ Rasselas, a quasi-novel written in 1759 by Johnson to pay the expenses of his mother's funeral, the subject of which is an imaginary prince of Abyssinia, and its aim a satire in sombre vein on human life.
Rastatt or Rastadt (12) , a town in Baden, on the Murg, 15 m. SW. of Carlsruhe; is fortified, and manufactures hardware, beer, and tobacco.
Rataña, a brandy flavoured with kernels of fruits.
Rathlin (1) , a picturesque, cliff-girt island (61⁄2 by 1-1/3 m.) off the N. coast of Antrim; fishing is the chief industry; has interesting historical associations. ”

“ Rathlin has been so well desstockinge." cribed in Once a Week * that we cannot do better than refer our readers to
it,
and our-
much
haste as possible through the ugly current between the island and Fairhead. This tide is named, significantly enough uiake as
in Irish, SleiMk-na-massa, or the Valley of the
m
Sea, and was as wide a berth
days of old carefully given as possible, by the warrior navigators, who held it in the utmost fear ever since the destruction by drowing of Brecain, son of Nial, of the Nine Hostages, together with his fleet of fifty corraghs. !. ”

“ Pauling.
“Yes,” agreed Rawlins, “but it’s not. I know the place as well as I do my own island back in the Bahamas. There’s only one island in the West Indies that it could be. There aren’t many with ruins of forts cut from solid rock. I don’t know of another that has them and a turtle-shaped rock off the point, and I can swear there’s not another that has both those and the big rats as he calls them—the Jutias—and that’s a little island off Santo Domingo known as Trade Wind Cay.” ”

“ In front of this river is a group of islands, of which two only are of large size, namely, ROTTNEST and BUACHE. We anchored on the north side of the former, but broke the fluke, from the rocky nature of the bottom. On the North-East side of the island, the anchorage is better, since it is more sheltered. Rottnest Island is five miles long: it was discovered by Vlaming in 1696. Its shores are very rocky and difficult to land upon, particularly those of its northern side, which is fronted by rocks. ”

“ The remotest groups, like the Sandwich Islands and Easter Island, were found and settled too long ago even for tradition to retain more than a fabulous story about it. “These Vikings of the Pacific,” says Ratzel, “continued to discover even small and remote islets. In the whole of the Pacific there is not one island of any size of which it was left to Europeans to demonstrate the habitability.” It has even been argued that the continent of America was peopled by Pacific Islanders, who made their way to it from Polynesia ”

“ The Captain of the Kildalton feared lest even the distance of the settlement from the Manager’s house might not suffice to prevent the plague being carried there by insects, and told a gruesome tale, within his knowledge, of two white men who had gone for a visit to a Pacific island, one of whom on their return to an American port had been immediately sent back to a leper colony. But how could one allow the last vestige of knowledge in Easter Island to die out without an effort? ”

“ It has nine miles of rugged and extremely indented coast-line, here and there rising in abrupt cliffs considerably over four hundred feet high. There is only one good landing-place; on the south-east, where the height of Lamator and the lump of rock known as “Rat Island,” shelter a little curving beach from the heavy Atlantic wash.
108 The isle contains 1046 acres, chiefly of barren upland, covered with rough grass, gorse, heather, and bracken, and inhabited at the present day by some thirty-five persons. ”

“ No native fires were seen between this part and Rottnest Island, nor was there any other indication of the coast being inhabited; it is however likely to be as populous as any other part, for the hills in the interior, which we occasionally got a glimpse of, seemed to be wooded, and would therefore furnish subsistence to natives from hunting, even if the seashore failed in supplying them with fish. Between the bare sandy point and Island Point there is a deep bay, the shores of which are fronted by a reef partly dry, extending from the shore two miles. ”

“ It leads first across the island by the western transverse plain till, at Vaihu, the sea is reached, then runs along the south coast with its low rocks and continuous line of breaking surf. Every step of this part of the way is marked, for those who have eyes to see, with ruined burial-places; many of them strewn with the remains of the statues which have once been erected upon them. As Raraku is approached, there lie by the roadside isolated figures of portentous size, abandoned, it has been thought, in the act of removal from the quarries to the terraces. ”

“ When day came, we discovered it to be a huge hill, called ‘the Chariot of the Gods.’ On the third day after our departure thence, after sailing by streams of fire, we arrived at a bay, called ‘the Southern Horn;’ at the bottom of which lay an island like the former one, having a lake, and in the lake another island full of savage people, far the greater part of whom were women, whose bodies were hairy, and whom our interpreters called ‘gorillæ.’ Though we pursued the men, we could not catch any of them ”

“ Over to the eastern end of the island is that little bay, and there the jungle is very dense. There are more rocks at the far eastern end of the island, some quite tall.”
“And you didn’t see anything at all in the way of a settlement or a place where boats might land?” questioned Randy.
“Not a thing! It looks to me as if this island had never been visited.”
“Oh, I reckon these islands are all visited once in a while,” remarked Ira Small. “The natives come in their long boats to see what they can pick up. ”

“ Very great praise is due to Darling and his sons for their great exertions—having run a considerable risk in approaching the rock with a heavy sea. A signal gun upon each island where the lighthouses are, would be of very great use in cases of accidents of this sort, when assistance could be immediately had from North Sunderland, Bamborough, or Holy Island—for had it not been for the circumstance of Darling's sons being there, this poor fellow must inevitably have perished. ”

“ The horror of our situation smote upon my mind: here were we, little more than boys, left on a strange shore with no food but what we could pick up, no clothes but what we stood in—and they were but shirt and breeches, for the coats we had used as a sail had been washed from the raft when the great wave struck us—and no implements or tools of any kind, not so much as a jack-knife. As yet we knew nothing of the land whereupon we had been cast, though I guessed it must be an island, but whether large or small, peopled or desolate, fertile or barren, all remained to be discovered. ”

“ In compliance with many requests, I have thought it would not be improper, [Pg 536] and might be acceptable to my Norfolk friends, for me to give an account of my visits during the last two years to my native place, and to the Island within Long Point, which my father obtained from the Crown, and which now belongs to me—marked on old maps as Pottahawk Point, but designated on later maps, and more generally known, as "Ryerson's Island." ”

“ Late in the afternoon Deirdre found occasion to talk to Terry about Thrawn Island.
"It's the China Sea tracking station for satellites," she told him. "Some of the staff are friends of my father's. It's right on the edge of the Luzon Deep, and the island's actually an underwater mountain that just barely protrudes above the surface. There are some hills, a coral reef and a lagoon. It's also terrifically steep, and you can use the fish-driving device as much as you please without startling any Filipino fishermen." ”

“ English Narrows, which was next reached, is considered the most difficult piece of navigation in the channels: a small island lies in the middle of the fairway, leaving only a narrow passage on either side, down which, under certain conditions, the tide runs at a terrific rate. It was exciting, as the yacht approached her course between the island and opposing cliff which are separated by only some 360 yards, to hear Mr. Ritchie ask Mr. Gillam to take the helm himself, and the latter give the order to “stand by the anchor” in case of mishap ”

“ Well, there’s nothing to hurt in that; the islands up north are all full of one-handed men, like the parties in the “Arabian Nights”; but either Randall was too old, or he drank too much, and the short and the long of it was that he died. Pretty soon after, the nigger was turned out of the island for stealing from white men, and went off to the west, where he found men of his own colour, in case he liked that, and the men of his own colour took and ate him at some kind of a corroborree, and I’m sure I hope he was to their fancy!
So there was I, left alone in my glory at Falesá ”

“ Edmunds assured us, with amused sympathy, that his initial experiences and disillusionment had been precisely similar to our own. The natives themselves, nevertheless, continue to hunt with undiminished zeal for these hidden articles, whose value is well known; it is the one form of work which they enjoy. Rumour had come from Tahiti, shortly before we reached the island, that articles were hidden in a recess in the coast not far from the Cannibal Cave ”

“ It is pathetic even now to hear the old men describe the scenes which they witnessed in their youth, illustrating by action how the raiders threw down on the ground gifts which they thought likely to attract the inhabitants, and, when the islanders were on their knees scrambling for them, tied their hands behind their backs and carried them off to the waiting ship. The natives say that one thousand in all were so removed from the island, and, unfortunately, there were amongst them some of the principal men, including many of the most learned, and the last of the ariki, or chiefs. ”

“ In steering for Rottnest Island and the southern passage from the westward, the shore should not be approached nearer than half a mile, and the bays on each side of the south point are foul and rocky. Porpoise Bay, on its NE side, is also fronted by a low rocky mass called Direction Islet, which lies 11⁄4 miles E 23d. N from the south point, and has deep water to within a cable's length of its SE side. The summit of Direction Islet in a line with a hill with some trees on its summit (Tree Hill) , about 1⁄2 a mile to the north of the south point, leads directly over Middle Bank ”

“ We must not, of course, attempt to raise any permanent signal, for such a thing would beyond question be discovered by the savages of some neighbouring island when going about in their canoes, and the last thing we could wish was to bring savages into our peaceful domain. On the other hand, unless we had some means of signalling, a ship might easily pass us by before we could communicate with it, for the island was so small that no vessel would heave to on the mere chance of finding water, since its most important river, if it had one, could not be more than a mere brook in size. ”

“ The first of these islands, about six acres in extent, was named the Vicar's or Derwent Island, on which a family mansion had been erected. On Lord's Island, which was quite near the side, were the ruins of an old summer-house built by the Ratcliffe family with the stones from their ruined castle on Castlerigg. The third island, which was in the centre of the lake, also had a summer-house that had been built there by the late Sir Wilfrid Lawson, composed of unhewn stone and covered with moss to make it look ancient. ”

“ In this hope we came to anchor off the north-west side of this island, when it was as much as we could do to hand our sails, stop our cable, and execute the other necessary labours, so greatly were we reduced. We imagined we could see a run of water, yet dreaded the dangerous surf which broke all round those parts of the island we could see. Mr Randal was sent with some jars, to try what could be done; and as he did not appear again when very late at night, I became apprehensive he was either lost, or, not finding water on the island, had gone in search of it to the continent. ”