f May in every year, and takes a cruise
toward the Dursey Islands, at the north entrance of Bantry Bay, a distance
of some forty miles; and that, after dancing several times round the rocks
known to mariners as the Bull, Cow, and Calf, it then shapes its homeward
course, drops anchor at the spot from whence it sailed, and remains
stationary during the remainder of the year.

The Fastnett, however, it appears, is not the only enchanted spot in that
locality; for at the head of Schull Harbor, about nine miles north of the
rock, on the top of Mount Gabriel--about 1400 feet above the sea-level--is a
celebrated lake, which the people say is so deep, that the longest line
ever made would not reach its bottom. It is also stoutly asserted that a
gentleman once dropped his walking-stick into the lake, and that it was
afterward found by a fisherman near the Fastnett. On another occasion, a
female wishing to get some water from the lake to perform a miraculous
cure on one of her friends, accidentally let fall the jug into the water,
and after several months, the identical jug--it could not be mistaken, part
of the lip being broken off--was also picked up near the Fastnett. For such
reasons the people imagine that there is some mysterious connection
between the rock and the lake, and that they have a subterranean passage
or means of communication. Captain Wolfe, indeed, during his survey of the
coast in 1848, sounded the mysterious pool, and found the bottom with a
line _seven feet long_; but the people shake their heads at the idea, and
say it was all _freemasonry_ on the part of the captain, and ask how he
accounts for the affair of the stick and jug? It will be some time, I
presume, before this puzzling question can be solved to the satisfaction
of all parties; and the traditions of the stick and jug, and many other
extraordinary occurrences, are likely to be handed down to succeeding
generations. The lake, or bog-hole, must therefore be left alone in its
glory; but, alas! not so with the Fastnett.

No more will it hoist sail for its Walpurgie trip, and cruise to the
Durseys, for it is now _firmly moored_; and in the hands of man the
wonderful Fastnett is reduced to a simple isolated rock in the Atlantic
Ocean. During the awful shipwrecks in the winters of 1846 and 1847, but
little assistance was derived from the Cape Clear light, which is too
elevated, and is often totally obscured by fog, and this drew attention to
the Fastnet