The tram line terminates in a pretty and picturesque village, called Dalkey, which was a medieval stronghold and the scene of many fierce fights, first between the earls of the Pale of Dublin and invading Danes, and after that with the pirates who haunted this coast for a century. It was a Danish settlement for several centuries, and afterward the most important outpost of Dublin, defended by seven great castles, three of which still remain in partial ruins. One of them is now remodeled for use as a town hall. They are imposing piles of masonry, and thick mats of ivy conceal the ancient wounds.
We took an "outside car" at the end of the tram line at Dalkey to drive around the shore of the bay, which the driver assured us was the most beautiful in the world and even surpassed the Bay of Naples, which it is said to resemble, and for that reason many of the names are the same. The resemblance might possibly be detected by a person with a vigorous imagination. Killiney Bay, however, is a lovely sheet of water, surrounded by high bluffs that are clad in June with glowing garments of gorse and hawthorn. The first is a low bush which has a brilliant yellow flower, and the hawthorn trees are as white as banks of snow. The land is divided into meadows and pastures on the slopes by hedges of hawthorn, and the turf is concealed by millions of buttercups as yellow as gold. It is a rocky coast. Rugged crags that break out give a stern expression to the picture, and sometimes rise a hundred feet or more in frowning precipices of black granite.
Here and there the towers of a castle or the chimneys of a villa arise from banks of foliage, and, perched along the bluff above the seashore, like the chalets of Switzerland, are comfortable cottages and mansions in which rich people from Dublin dwell. Clinging to the side of the bluff and protected by a stone wall is a splendid roadway encircling the entire bay, quite as beautiful, although on a smaller scale, as the Corniche road from Nice to Monte Carlo. The deep blue of the water, the vivid green of the foliage, which seems more pronounced in Ireland than anywhere I have ever been, the great white banks of hawthorn, the yellow of the buttercups and the gorse give a brilliancy to the landscape that does not appear anywhere on the Riviera or anywhere else I know.