Chapter XI: Part 11

Truly this part of Clare seemed to have any amount of square castles in ruined grandeur scattered along the line of rail. We stopped at a station and saw Ennis lying below us, and O'Connell's statue rising up between us and the sky. My two friends parted from me here to my immense relief. I felt as if I were obtaining admiration on false pretences. The woman took my hand, and, with a long fond look, began to bless me in English, but her feelings compelled her to slide off into fervent Irish. The frieze-coated gentleman stood, hat in hand, and bowed and bowed, and "his life was at my service, and if I wished to pass unnoticed sure he could whisht, and good-by and God bless you." and away they went. For whom did they take me?

Clare is pretty stony. Again I saw fields from which stones had been gathered to form fences like ramparts. Again I saw fields crusted with stone like the fields of Cong, with the same waterworn appearance, but not so extensive. The little, pretty station of Cusheen seemed an oasis in a stony wilderness.

Past many a little field hemmed in with stony barricades, past many an ancient ruin, sitting in desolation, into Athenry, the ancient Ath-an- righ, the fortress of kings. It was pouring rain, it often is pouring rain. I took shelter in the hotel whose steps rise from the railway station. There, in a quaint little corner room with a broad strip of window, I settled myself to write with the light of a poor candle, and the rain fell outside. Athenry bristles with ruins.

King John has another castle here all in ruins. There is a part of a wall here and there, and the arch of a gate which has been patched up and has some fearful hovels leaning up against it. It has the ruins of an abbey and of a priory. The names of Clanricarde and De Birmingham linger among these ruins; the modern cabins, without window pane or any chimney at all, but a hole in the roof, are mixed up with the ruins also.

The well-fed maid at the hotel informed me that they were very poor. There is no work and no tillage, the land being in grass for sheep. "I do not believe any of them know what a full meal means. No one knows how they manage to live, the creatures," said the maid, comfortably. So the night and the morning passed at Athenry, and we passed on to the village of Oranmore.

LI.

GALWAY AND THE MEN OF GALWAY.

From Athenry and its ruins went to Oranmore and its ruins. The poverty of Athenry deepens into still greater poverty in Oranmore. The country is under grass, hay is the staple crop, so there being little tillage, little labor is required. They depend on chance employment to procure the foreign meal on which they live. Some depend for help to a great extent on the friends in America.

There is a new pier being built here, for an arm of the sea runs up to Oranmore. They told me that this pier was being built by the Canadian money. It will be a harbor of refuge for fishing craft and better days of work and food may yet dawn upon the West.

Behind the pier are the ruins of a large castle which belonged to the Blakes, one of the Galway tribes. It was inhabited by the last Blake who held any of the broad acres of his ancestors within the memory of the old people. I stood in the roofless upper room which had been the dancing saloon, penetrated into galleries built for defence lit only by loop holes, went down the little dark stair into the dungeon, tried to peer into the underground passage that connected with the seashore, ascended to the battlements and looked over the lonely land and explored multitudes of small rooms reached by many different flights of stone steps.

These people are largely of the Norman blood. Oh, for the time when peace and plenty, law and order shall reign here; when the peasant shall not consider law as an oppressor to be defied or evaded, an engine of oppression in the hands of the rich, but an impartial and inflexible protector of the rights of rich and poor alike!

A young priest told me here that the clergy about this place were opposed to the teachings of the Land League--did not countenance it among their people. A Catholic gentleman in Roscommon told me the same concerning the bishop and clergy of his own locality.

The tillage about Galway is careful and good, what there is of it. I saw great fields of wheat that had been cleared of stones, by generations of labor I should say. I had this fact brought to my mind by some peasants in the neighborhood of Athenry, in this way: "A man works and his family works on a bit of ground fencing it, improving it, gathering off the stones; as he improves his rent is raised; he clings to the little home; he gets evicted and disappears into the grave or the workhouse, and another takes the land at the higher rent; improves from that point; has the rent raised, till he too falls behind and is evicted; and so it goes on till the lands are fit for meadowing and grass, and the holdings are run together and the homes blotted out." Of course I do not give the man's words exactly, but I give his thoughts exactly.

Galway was something of a disappointment to me at first, it had not such a foreign look as I expected. It is a very busy town, has every appearance of being a thriving town, every one you meet walks with purpose as of one who has business to attend to. It is refreshing to see this after looking at the hopeless faces and lounging gait of the people of many places in the west. Wherever the tall chimneys rise the people have a quick step and an all-alive look.

I wandered about Galway, and to my great delight had a guide to point out what was most worth looking at. Of course I heard of the bravery of the thirteen tribes of Galway, who snapped up Galway from the O'Flaherties and assimilated themselves to the natives as more Irish than themselves. After walking about a little I did notice the arched gateways and the highly ornamented entrance doors which they concealed.

The first place of interest pointed out to me was Lynch castle. From one of the windows of this castle Warder Lynch, in 1493, hung his own son. It is said from this act the name Lynch Law arose. The Lynch family, originally Lintz, came from Lintz in Austria.

This mayor or Warder Lynch was a wealthy merchant trading with Spain. He trusted his son to go thither and purchase a cargo of wine. The young man fell into dissipation, and spent the money, buying the cargo on credit. The nephew of the Spanish merchant accompanied the ship to obtain the money, and arrange for further business. The devil tempted the young Lynch to hide his folly by committing crime. Near the Galway coast the young Spaniard was thrown overboard. All the friends of the family and his father received the young merchant after his successful voyage with great joy. The father consented to his son's marriage with his early love, the daughter of a neighbor, who gladly consented to accept the successful young merchant for his son-in-law. All went merry as a marriage bell. Just before the marriage a confessor was sent for to a sick seaman, who revealed young Lynch's crime. The Warder of Galway stood at the bed of this dying man, and heard of the villany of his beloved son. Young Lynch was arrested, tried, found guilty, and sentenced. The mother of young Lynch, having exhausted all efforts to obtain mercy for her son, flew in distraction to the Blake tribe--she was a Blake--and raised the whole clan for a rescue. When the hour of execution dawned, the castle was surrounded by the armed clan of the Blakes, demanding that the prisoner be spared for the honor of the family. The Warder addressed the crowd, entreating them to submit to the majesty of the law, but in vain. He led his son--who, when he had borne the shame, and came to feel the guilt of his deeds, had no desire to live--up the winding stair in the building to that very arched window that overlooks the street, and there, to that iron staple that is fixed in the wall, he hung him with his own hands, after embracing him, in sight of all the people. The father expected to die by the hands of the angry crowd below, but they, awed, went home at a dead march. The mother died of the shock, and the sternly just old man lived on. I looked at his house in Lombard street. Over the entrance is a skull and cross bones in relief on black marble, with this motto, which I copied,

"REMEMBER DEATH
Vanitie of vanities, and all is but vanitie."

There is a fine museum in Queen's College, Galway, which I did not see. Of course there are many things I did not see, although my eyes were on hard duty while there. I did see specimens of that most beautiful marble of Connemara. It is worked up into ornaments, in some cases mounted with silver. As soon as any one enquires for it they are known to be from America. A book shaped specimen that I coveted was priced at twelve and sixpence. It is there yet for me. It is of every shade and tint of green, and is really very lovely. I saw many specimens of it manufactured into harps stringed and set in silver, with a silver scroll, and the name of Davitt or Parnell on them in green enamel. There were brooches and scarf pins of this kind. I did not notice the name of the great Liberator among these ornaments.

The Claddagh was a great disappointment to me. I heard that it was not safe to venture into it alone. I got up early and had sunshine with me when I strolled through the Claddagh. I saw no extreme poverty there. Most of the houses were neatly whitewashed; all were superior to the huts among the ruins at Athenry. The people were very busy, very comfortably clothed, and, in a way, well-to-do looking. Some of the houses were small and windowless, something the shape of a beehive, but not at all forlornly squalid. They make celebrated fleecy flannel here in Claddagh. They make and mend nets. They fish. I saw some swarthy men of foreign look, in seamen's clothes, standing about. You will see beauty here of the swarthy type, accompanied by flashing black eyes and blue black hair, but I saw lasses with lint white locks also in the Claddagh. The testimony of all here is that the Claddagh people are a quiet, industrious, temperate and honest race of people. I am inclined to believe that myself. It is a pretty large district and I wandered through it without hearing one loud or one profane word. I was agreeably disappointed in the Claddagh. Claddagh has a church and large school of its own.

They told me that the Galway coast has the same flowers as the coast of Spain. I can testify that flowers abound in little front gardens, and window panes, and in boxes on every window ledge. I did not go to see the iodine works, where this substance is manufactured from sea weed. I saw people burning kelp--and smelled them too--on the Larne and Carnlough coast and in Mayo. They burn the dried sea weed in long narrow places built of stone. They are not kilns, but are more like them than anything else I know of. You see stacks and ropes of the sea weed put up to dry. Kelp burning is not a fragrant occupation, and its manufacture is not specially attractive.

I think Galway is a very prosperous thriving town. I went to the bathing place of Salt Hill, a long suburb of pretty cottages, mostly to be let furnished to sea bathers. I should have gone on to Cushla Bay and to the islands of Arran, but I did not. I looked round me and returned to Galway.

There is difference perceptible to me, but hardly describable between the Galway men and the rest of the West. The expression of face among the Donegal peasantry is a patience that waits. The Mayo men seem dispirited as the Leitrim men also do, but are capable of flashing up into desperation. The Galway men seem never to have been tamed. The ferocious O'Flaherties, the fierce tribes of Galway, the dark Spanish blood, have all left their marks on and bequeathed their spirit to the men of Galway. I met one or two who, like some of the Puritans, believed that killing was not murder, who urged that if the law would not deter great men from wrong-doing it should not protect them.

When trade revives and prosperity dawns upon the West the fierce blood, like the Norman blood elsewhere, will go out in enterprise and spend itself in improvements.

Land was pointed out to me in Galway for which L4 an acre was paid by village people to plant potatoes in. This is called conacre. In going through Galway City, even in the suburbs, I did not see great appealing poverty such as I saw elsewhere. There was the bustle of work and the independence of work everywhere, but in the country, there seems poverty mixed with the fierce impatience of seeing no better way to mend matters. I heard of evictions having taken place here and there, but saw none.

LII.

THE LAKES OF KILLARNEY.

There is a good deal of disturbance about Limerick, according to the papers. A traveller would never discover it. It does not appear on the surface. I have been a little here and there in the environs of Limerick, and have seen no sign of any mob or any disturbance. Police go out unexpectedly to do eviction service and it is only known when the report comes in the papers.

I did not hear in Limerick town or county, in any place where I happened to be, of any landlord who had got renown for any special hardness. There was a person boycotted quite near to the city who was getting help from neighboring landowners to gather in his crops. What his offence was I did not learn.

In Limerick I met with an old and very dear friend who gave me a few facts about boycotting as seen in personal experience. An outlying farm was taken by my friend from which a widow lady had been evicted before the present agitation commenced. A premium of L100 was paid for possession. My friends had congratulated themselves on this transaction having occurred before the organization of the Land League; but one night an armed and masked party took the widow lady and reinstated her in her place. My friends were startled a little by a visit from this party, who informed them that they were returning from reinstating the lady in her place. Had they any objection? No, they had no objection. Would they disturb her in possession? No, they would not disturb her in possession. If they had only the L100 which they had invested they were quite willing to surrender the farm. Three cheers were given for my friends, three cheers for the widow lady, a gun was fired off, there was a wild cheer for Rory of the Hills, and they disappeared. The widow lady after some time quietly left the place of her own accord, and everything was as it had been before. They, the armed party, found out that they were not doing the lady a kindness by reinstating her, and so the matter ended.

Limerick, though an old city, is not a very large one. Going down the principal street--George's street--you can look down any of the cross streets beyond the masts on Shannon and see on the other side of the river oats, waving yellow and in stocks, up the slope. Standing on the Wellesley Bridge, where young Fitzgibbon in bronze stands on a granite pedestal, perpetually endeavoring to draw his sword--which he succeeded in drawing to some purpose at Alma and Inkerman, if we are to credit the pedestal, which we do--you can look down the Shannon, over the boats and among the steamboat chimneys and the ships' masts, and see the green banks of the Shannon, broad and wide, with cattle standing ankle deep in the rich pasture. You can see them as they extend far away, widening as they go, till the horizon shuts out any farther view. The constant rain of these two last months, I am afraid, will damage the ripening crop. It is near the close of August and there is hay yet uncut, there is hay lying out in every form of bleached windrow, or lap, or spread, under the rain. Some of it looks quite spoiled.

No one, I suppose, leaves Limerick without gazing at and perhaps wishing for some of the beautiful specimens of Limerick lace that are displayed in the shop-windows.

From Limerick to Killarney in the rain through a country gradually growing poorer. At the junction there was a detention which enabled me to walk about a little. There was a detachment of police that filled a couple of car passing on their way to eviction in one direction; a large detachment returning from eviction got out of the cars here. Eviction in this part of Ireland is feverishly active, and on every hand you hear of Mr. Clifford Lloyd. A person with whom I had some conversation told me I could have no idea of the state of the country without penetrating through it away from the line of rail. Of course this is so.

As we neared Killarney the waters were out over the low lying lands and the hay looked pitiful. In a pelting rain we steamed into Killarney, passed through the army of cabmen and their allies and were whirled away to Lakeview House on the banks of the lower Killarney lake, a pretty place standing in its own grounds. Killarney is a nice little town with some astonishing buildings. I have heard it styled as a dirty town; it struck me as both clean and rather stylish in its general appearance. It seems to depend almost entirely on tourists. Unlike Limerick, unlike Galway, but very like other western towns the number of people standing idly at the corners, or leaning against a tree to shelter from the rain, strikes a stranger painfully. The lounging gait and alert eyes mark people who have no settled industry, but are watching their chance.

We were allured to Lakeview Hotel by a printed card of terms and found it delightfully situated. Did not intend to linger here any time, did not seem to care much for the lakes now when I had got to see them. It was a damp evening, the mountains, that loom up on every hand, were wrapped in their gray cloaks, the lake whipped up by the squally winds had risen in swells and everything looked dismal. I shall see some one convenient sight and look round me and leave in the morning, I said.

The only available sight to be seen that night was Torc Cascade--well, I will be content with that. I must take a car; bargained for that, and drove through the walled-up country. Every place here is walled up, enclosed, fenced in. I noticed some cottages that were pictures of rustic beauty, others that were dirty hovels. The pretty cottages were occupied by laborers on the estates that border on the lake. Passed a handsome, little Episcopalian church in a sheltered place; near it were two monumental crosses of the ancient Irish pattern, erected by the tenants to the memory of Mr. Herbert, who was their landlord and who is spoken of by the people as one who deserved that they should devote some of their scant earnings to raise a cross to his memory.

In due time we arrived at a little door in the wall, where a man stood in Mr. Herbert's interest, who gave a small ticket for sixpence, unlocked the little arched door and admitted the stranger into this temple of nature and art. A board hung on a tree was the first object, warning visitors not to pluck ferns or flowers, the man at the gate having notice to deprive marauding visitors of anything so gathered. There is a winding gravel walk leading up the height almost alongside of the brawling stream that leaps from rock to rock. I did not see any flowers at all, but the common heather bell in two varieties and the large coarse fern so common in our Canadian woods. There are many cascades unnamed and unnoticed in our Canadian forests as handsome as Torc Cascade. When you get up a good way you come to a black fence that bars the way. You are above the tall firs, and the solemn Torc Mountain rises far above you. I would have been lost in admiration had I never seen the upper Ottawa or the River aux Lievres. Feeling no inclination to commit petty larceny on the ferns, I descended slowly and returned.

The ruined abbey of Muckross is another of the sights of Killarney. Every visitor pays a shilling to Mr. Herbert for permission to enter here. I did not go to see it, but some of the party at the hotel did. They described the cloisters as being in a good state of preservation-- cloisters are a kind of arched piazza running round a court yard, in this case having in its centre a magnificent yew tree. These ruins are taken great care of, therefore parts of the abbey are in a pretty good state of preservation. They tell of a certain man named John Drake, who took possession of the abbey kitchen about one hundred years ago, lived there as a hermit for about eleven years in the odor of sanctity.

There was quite a party going through the gap of Dunloe, which reduced the price of the trip to very little, comparatively speaking, and I was persuaded to join it. Every available spot about here has a lordly tower, a lady's bower, an old ruin or a new castle. The Workhouse is fine enough and extensive enough for a castle, and the Lunatic Asylum might be a palace for a crowned head. There are the ruins of Aghadon Castle on one ridge and the shrunk remains of a round tower. A brother of the great O'Connell lives here in a white house bearing the same name as the hotel, Lakeview House. We look with some interest at Dunloe Castle. once the residence of O'Sullivan Mor, and listen to the car-man who tells us of the glories of the three great families that owned Kerry, O'Sullivan Mor, O'Sullivan Bear and great O'Donoghoe.

Of course we hear legend after legend of the threadbare tales of the Lakes. We heard much of the cave of Dunloe which has many records, in the Ogham character, of Ireland in the days of the Druids. All this time we were driving along a road with bare mountains, and tree-covered mountains rising on every hand. It reminded me in some places of the long glen in Leitrim, in others of Canadian scenes among the mountains. We began to be beset by mounted men on scrubby ponies. They gathered round us, riding along as our escort, behind and before and alongside urging on us the necessity of a pony to cross the road through the gap. Their pertinacity was something wonderful.

The carman stopped at a miserable cabin said to have been the residence of the Kate Kearney of Lady Morgan's song. That heroine's modern representative expects everyone to take a dose of goat's milk in poteen from her, and leave some gratuity in return. The whole population turned out to beg under some pretext or another. One very handsome girl, bareheaded and barefooted, and got up light and airy as to costume, begged unblushingly without any excuse. She gathered up her light drapery with one hand, and kept up with the horse, skelping along through mud and mire as if she liked it. I noticed that she was set on by her parents who were the occupiers of a little farm.

Suddenly our car stopped at a house where all sorts of lake curiosities were exposed for sale. From this point it was four miles, Irish miles, through the gap to the lake to the point where we took the boat. This was one circumstance of which we were not aware when we started; it was therefore a surprize. I am sorry to say that this gap was a disappointment to me. It was a difficult path among bare mountains, but nothing startling or uncommon.

What was uncommon was the relays of indefatigable women that lay in wait for us at every turn. Goats' milk and poteen, photographs, knitted socks, carved knick-nacks in bog oak; everything is offered for sale; denial will not be taken. You pass one detachment to come upon another lurking in ambush at a corner. There are men with small cannons who will wake the echoes for a consideration; there are men with key bugles who will wake the echoes more musically for a consideration; there is the blind fiddler of the gap who fiddles away in hopes of intercepting some stray pennies from the shower. One impudent woman followed us for quite a way to sell us her photograph, as the photograph of Eily O'Connor, murdered here by her lover many years ago--murdered not at the gap but in the lake. There was a large party of us and these followers, horse, foot and artillery, I may say were a persistent nuisance all the way. The ponies, crowds of them, followed us to the entrance of the Gap, where they disappeared, but the women and girls never faltered for the five miles. The reiterated and re-reiterated offer of goat's milk and poteen became exasperating; the bodyguard of these pertinacious women that could not be shaken off was most annoying. The tourists are to the inhabitants of Killarney what a wreck used to be to the coast people of Cornwall, a God-send.

One does feel inclined to lose all patience as they run the gauntlet here, and then one looks around at the miserable cabins built of loose stones, at the thatch held on by ropes weighted with stones, the same as are to be seen in Achil Island, among the Donegal hills, or the long glens of Leitrim, notices the patches of pale, sickly, stunted oats, the little corners of pinched potatoes--a girl passed us with a tin dish of potatoes for the dinner, they were little bigger than marbles--the little rickles of turf that the constant rain is spoiling, and one sees that as there is really no industry in the place, of loom or factory, that want and encouragement have combined to make them come down like the wolf on the fold to the attack of tourists. It spoiled the view, it destroyed any pleasure the scenery might have afforded, and yet under the circumstances it was natural enough on their part. "We depend on the tourists, this is our harvest," the carmen explained to us. From the hotel keeper to the beggar all depend on the tourist season.

After all it was something to have passed through between the Macgillicuddy's Reeks and the purple mountain; something to see water like spun silver flinging itself from the mountain top in leaps to the valley below, to struggle up and up to the highest point of the gap and look back at the serpentine road winding in and out beside small still lakes through the valley far below. Of course we look into the Black Lough where St. Patrick imprisoned the last snake. Of course we had pointed out to us the top of Mangerton, and were told of the devil's punch bowl up there. Down through the Black Valley we came to the point where the boats waited for us, leaving the black rocks, the bare mountains, the poor little patches of tillage, the miserable huts and the multitudinous vendors of goat's milk and poteen behind. To our surprise the way to the boats was barred by a gate, and at the gate stood a man of Mr. Herbert's to receive a shilling for each passenger before they could pass to the boats. "He makes a good thing out of it," remarked the boatmen. I do not know how many more fees are to be paid for a look about the lakes of Killarney, but this gate, Torc Cascade and Muckross Abbey cost each tourist two shillings and sixpence to look at them.

The upper lake is beautiful, fenced around by mountains of every size and variety of appearance. Of course they are the same mountains you have been seeing all day, but seen from a different standpoint. The Eagle's Nest towers up like an attenuated pyramid, partly clothed with trees, and is grand enough and high enough for the eagles to build on its summit, which they do. Here were men stationed to wake the echoes with the bugle. As our boat swept round, recognizing that we had not employed them, they ceased the strain until we passed, but the echoes followed us and insisted on being heard.

There are many, many spots on the Upper Ottawa as fair and as romantic as the Lakes of Killarney, and they are very lovely. The trees on the islands have a variety that do not grow in our Canada, principally the glossy-leaved arbutus. From the upper lake we slid down a baby rapid under an old bridge--built by the Danes of course, the arch formed as the arches of the castles in the west--into the middle lake.

The day had been one of dim showers, but in the middle lake the sun streamed out and touched the peak of the purple mountain and all the mountain sides and woody islands with splendor, that streamed down in golden shafts along the rain that was falling on some, and chased for a moment the shadows that lay on others. We slid down a fainter rapid under another bridge into the last and largest lake. On every lake there are buildings of glory and beauty to be seen nestling on the banks among the trees, or towering on the heights, owned by the wealthy and titled people that own the land round the lakes. A cottage built for Her Majesty was pointed out to us, and we heard of a royal deer hunt held here. We heard rapturous accounts of stags hunted to the verge of death, and saved alive to repeat the ennobling sport. And we censure without measure the Spanish bull fight where the animals are killed once! How many deaths do these timid deer suffer? I am afraid we are not as noble and merciful a people as we think we are.

There are sights to be seen and tales to be heard about these lakes of loveliness that would occupy weeks, but a glimpse and away must suffice for some, and our party all left Killarney on the next morning. I must say that the wealth and the poverty, the unblushing begging, the want of any remunerative industry, the idle listless people about the corners, made Killarney a sad place to me.

LIII.

CORK AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD.

After returning from the lakes the rain came down in such torrents as made us feel very thankful to be indoors again. We heard it raining all through the night as if the days of Noah were returned once more. Every one became anxious about the harvest in consequence of this steady rain. The bishop has recommended prayer in all the Catholic churches for seasonable weather to save the harvest. Murmurs of the appearance of rot in the potatoes reach me frequently. I have noticed disease in the potatoes appearing on the dinner table, a kind of dry rot, only to be noticed after cutting the potato.

From Killarney to Cahirciveen is forty-five miles; beyond that is the island of Valentia. There are many wild views to be seen on this island, the property of the Knight of Kerry. The traveller here can notice how the Atlantic is wearing away the Kerry coast.

The first part of this drive of forty-five miles is through a poor, poverty-stricken country, with such cabins of mud and misery as are an amusement to the tourist and a pain and a shame to the Irish lover of his country. There is nothing about these habitations to hint that any idea of comfort had ever penetrated here. For the reason of pelting rain and driving winds I was forced to give up my intention of going across by car to Kenmare, and from thence to Skibbereen, and took the train for Cork. The land seems to grow better the nearer we come to Cork.

Arrived at Cork, the first object which attracted my attention was the monument to Father Mathew. The temperance cause to which he dedicated his life sadly needs another champion. Will another Father Mathew arise?

As soon after my arrival in Cork as I was comfortably settled, I sallied out to discover the river Lee with an insane notion that I would hear "the bells of Shandon that sound so grand on" its pleasant waters. I discovered the river with tree-shaded, secluded dwellings on one bank and a wide green pasture on another. There was a bridge at the place where I first came in sight of the river, and a great crowd, so eager as to be silent, gazing up the stream. Thinking it was a boat race that drew their attention, I crossed the bridge to gain the green pasture at the other side. The pasture was reached by a little arched door through a boundary wall, where a policeman kept guard. There was a great crowd around this little door. There had been an accident, a boat had upset and all in it had been lost; they were searching for the bodies. I asked for admittance and the policeman unlocked the door and allowed me to pass. Followed the path along the water side, and came to the crowd round the four bodies laid upon the wet meadow grass. A father, so quiet, partially gray, trim and respectable looking, a young lad in blue boating costume, a young girl in black, farther on another in whom they thought there were signs of life, and about her two doctors were working, applying a galvanic battery. The mother had been restored and was conveyed into one of the houses.

I never saw any attempts to recover a drowned person before. I wondered that they left the body lying on the damp earth in wet clothing. They told me that it might be fatal to move her before they succeeded in bringing her back to life. They tried a long time in vain, then they laid the four bodies all in a row for the coroner. The damp grass, the trampling and sympathetic crowd, the four bodies in their wet garments laid on the bank, will always rise in my memory along with my first sight of the river Lee.

Cork seems a rich city, full of business, bustle on all the wharves, buying and selling on all the streets. The buildings are very grand. Alongside the river is a long ridge rising up to a tree-crowned summit. On that hillside is tier upon tier of grand houses, grand churches, fine convents and public buildings of one kind and another. You come upon fine churches through the town in corners where you do not expect them.

The church of churches in Cork is the Protestant Cathedral, of St. Finn Barre--whoever he was. This church sits high up on a rocky foundation, its pointed spires of exquisite stone-work pierce the sky. It is not finished, scaffoldings are there, and skilled chisels and cunning hammers have been knapping and polishing there for many a day, and are likely to continue hammering and chiselling for many a day more. Inside, it is marble of Cork, marble of Connemara, marble of Italy, polished to the brightest. The gates which admit from one ecclesiastical division to another are wrought in flowers that blaze in gold. Before the altar, parables of our Lord are wrought in mosaic on the floor. On the wall the different noble families who belong here, or have money invested here, have their shields containing their coats of arms on the wall. Into this grand church have been wrought the religious ideas of the church people for years, at the cost of L100,000, and there is an immense golden angel on the point of a gable calling with two trumpets for L25,000 more to finish it.

None but a rich city could afford the splendid buildings that are in Cork. The evening on which I arrived in Cork was signalized not only by the boat accident, but by a grand wedding, the wedding of a Sir George Colthurst in the splendid cathedral church just mentioned, and there was any amount of fashion, and high birth and young beauty gathered there. The bride was beautiful, the bride was "tall," and not yet, they say, out of her teens. She was dressed in white satin and silver cloth, Irish lace and orange blossoms, and wore no jewels. None but invited eyes were allowed to look at the grand ceremony which made the fair bride and the lord of Blarney castle one. Some tenants of the bridegroom got up a bonfire, had some barrels of beer given them to rejoice withal, and were dancing to the music produced by six fiddlers, when they were surrounded by a small army of disguised people, fired into, beaten and dispersed. The first accounts put the number of wounded at twenty, to-day they are reduced to five--perhaps that is the proportion of exaggeration in newspaper accounts of outrage generally. The newly-made bride and bridegroom went to see the wounded, leaving cordials and money at every house.

One thing is observable in Cork, the determination to make an effort to restore native industry from its present languishing condition. Passing along the streets I notice clerks in the windows affixing labels on goods with the words, "Irish Manufactures," "Cork made goods," "Blarney tweeds," "Irish blankets," "Cork made furniture." There have been meetings held on the subject since I came here. No city in the world could appear to be more quiet and law-abiding than Cork to all appearance.

As one instance of the exaggeration of reports concerning outrages, I see the disturbance in Cork that took place at the rejoicings about Sir George Colthurst's marriage advertised with the heading 20 men shot. The local report says five injured, one shot, but not fatally.

Went down the river Lee to Queenstown. It did not rain except a few drops during the whole time. The sun shone, the clouds, some of them were billowy and white, and massed themselves on a deep, blue sky. The little steamer was crowded fore and aft with holiday passengers, and a large quantity of small babies. The river Lee, from Cork to Queenstown, wears a green color, as if it were akin to the ocean. Flocks of sea gulls flying about, or perching on the ooze where the tide is out, make one think of the sea, but the green banks of the river are there to testify against it.

We expected to find that the scenery from Cork to Queenstown was beautiful, and so it is. There is no use in trying to praise it, for all praise seems flat compared with the reality. There are glorious, steep slopes leading up to fair, round hills, waving with golden grain, or green with aftermath, checked off into fields by gay, green hedges or files of stately trees. On the slope, half way up the slope, snuggling down at the foot of the slope, are residences of every degree of beauty. Houses, square and solid, with wide porticos; houses rising into many gabled peaks; houses that have swollen into all sorts of bay windows running up to the roof, or stopping with the first story. Houses that fling themselves up into the sky in towers and turrets, and assert themselves to be, indeed, castles.

Queenstown comes at last, a town hung up on a steep hillside, and on the very brow of the hill is an immense cathedral, unfinished like St. Finn Barre's, of Cork. In these cathedrals two forms of religious belief are slowly and expensively trying to express themselves in stone, chiselled and cut into a thousand forms of beauty, in marbles, polished and carved, in painted windows, in gildings and draperies of the costliest. Looking at these costly fanes erected to be a local spot where Jehovah's presence shall dwell, one can scarcely believe that He will dwell in the heart of the poor who are willing to receive Him in the day of His power. Is the soul of the beggar more dear to God as a dwelling place than these lofty temples? Forever the world is saying "Lord, behold what manner of stones and what buildings are here?" And the Lord cares more for the toiling fisherman, the poor disheartened widow, and the laboring and heavy laden peasant than the grandest buildings. The cost of these churches would buy out Achil island and the appurtenances thereof, I think. It would maybe purchase the wildest tract of the Donegal mountains. I wonder if a hardy mountain people, who could live on their own soil, and begin to feel the stirrings of enterprise and energy, would be as acceptable to Him who came anointed to preach the gospel to the poor as these poems in stone. Who knows?

We sat on a bench under the trees and looked at the harbor--its waters cut by many a flying keel, at Spike Island lying in the sun, all its fortifications as silent and lonely looking as if no convict nor any other living creature was there. Steamboats for "a' the airts the winds can blaw," were passing out and away, leaving a train of smoke behind them, and big sail vessels, three-masted and with sails packed up, are waiting to go, and revenue cutters and small passenger boats are flying about each on their way.

A lady sits by me and is drawn to talk to the stranger of the greenness of the grass here winter and summer, of the beauty spread out all around. She tells of one who died away in another land brought home to lie under the daisies here, just twenty years ago to-day. Other people, she says, are proud of their country, are fond of their country, but none have the same love for their country as the Irish have for green Erin. Every inch of ground; every blade of grass in Ireland is holy, says this lady with tears in her eyes. She is thinking of the dust that Irish grass covers from her sight. It is on an anniversary we meet; she cannot help speaking on this day of sacred things. The steamboat is wading up to the wharf. We do not know one another's names, but we have drawn near to each other--we clasp hands and part with a mutual God bless you. The little boat swallows up all that are willing to come on board, and like a black swan she sails up over the calm river, under the bright sky, past the handsome houses and the lovely grounds, among the clustering masts back to the rich city of Cork.

All the people injured in the attack on the rejoicing at Sir George Colthurst's marriage are pronounced recovered to-day, except the one who was wounded by a shot; he is still in the infirmary. A dignitary of the Catholic Church who preached at Millstreet, where the disturbance took place, introduced into his sermon remarks on the state of society there, when his hearers became affected with coughing to such a degree that the rev. gentleman had to stop for a time and speak directly to his hearers. After the sermon most of the congregation left the church before mass-- few remaining.

The sun has come out and the harvest will be greatly benefited by this tardy warmth, I am sure.

There has been some marching of soldiers--dragoons--fine looking men on fine horses--through the streets to-day, to the blare of a military band, accompanied and escorted by all the loose population of Cork. I was much interested to see among the running crowd the good pace made by a man with a wooden leg, who really could hop along with the best of them. This is all the apology for a crowd which I have seen in Cork. I have not heard the roar of one belated drunkard; such sounds have broken slumber in other towns. Whatever excitement may be in the county, the city of Cork seems as quiet, as orderly and as thriving as any city in the kingdom.

I have discovered that, though the lower part of the river Lee is crowded with masts and alive with traffic, the upper part, flowing along under the shadow of green trees and bordered by wide meadows, is as quiet as if it were flowing through the country miles from any city. I have discovered the magnificent promenade called the Mardyke, a wide, gravelled road overarched with trees, running along by the river. When the evening lamps are lit, the susceptibility of Cork wander here in pairs and "in couples agree." There are plenty of comfortable seats in which to rest, for the promenade is a very long one, and the shimmer of the many lamps among the green foliage has a pretty effect.

LIV.

CORK, TO BANDON, SKIBBEREEN AND SKULL.

From Cork by the new railway to Skibbereen there is one rather noticeable feature by the way. All the way stations in small places are wooden houses built American fashion, either clapboarded or upright boards battened where they meet. The road is through a hilly country and therefore lies mostly through deep cuttings that shut out the scenery. There is one long tunnel not far from Cork that educates you into a sense of what utter darkness means. It is pleasant to look over rich pastures back to the city crowding its lofty hills, and to notice what a grand steeple-crowned city it is.

The train crawls along through deep cuts, past these little wooden stations where everything is more primitive and backwoods looking than anything I have seen before in Ireland. The porters are civil and obliging, ready to answer the questions of the ignorant, even of those who travel third-class. The vast majority of the passengers are small traders, market-women and farmers' wives, who have been away making purchases.

By the time we reach Dunmanway we had our allowance of light served out to us, a lamp being thrust through the ceiling of the car from the top, and by its light we steamed into Skibbereen. I expected Skibbereen to be a small assemblage of mud huts, but was surprised to find it a large town of tall houses. As the bus rattled along through one gaslight street after another, I kept asking myself, is this really Skibbereen.

The little hotel where we stopped was very comfortable, very clean, and possesses a good cook. The next day in exploring the by streets and suburbs of the town I saw poverty enough, want enough. It was market day and the streets were crowded with country women in blue cloaks. These cloaks are all the same make, but some of them, owing to their material, were very stylish and shrouded as pretty black eyed, black-haired, rosy- cheeked women as I ever saw. Some of these cloaks are made of very fine material, the pleating about the shoulders very artistic, and the wide hoods lined with black satin when worn round the face make the wearers look like fancy pictures. Some of the women gather them round them in folds like drapery. I noticed at once that the artist who made the statues of O'Connell and Father Mathew had studied the drapery from the cloaks of some Claddagh or Skibbereen woman.

Market day is used as a day for confession, and the clergy are on hard duty on that day. Skibbereen boasts of a bishop and numerous resident priests. The town is as quiet as if such a thing as a riot, an outrage or a mob was never known.

In a little corner, squeezed in between houses, is a neat Methodist chapel and the parsonage beside it. Called on the minister, who received me graciously and was courteous and communicative. Having been by virtue of his office over a great part of Ireland he had seen a good deal of the oppression of the tenant, partly from the thoughtlessness of absentee landlords, partly from the want of any sympathy with the tenants. Had the Land League confined themselves to moderate efforts, and to the employment of constitutional means--means not tending to the dismemberment of the empire, he would have joined them with heart and soul, knowing the need there was of redress to the wrongs of the small farmer. He advised me to take a car and go on to Skull through Ballydehob if I wished to see poverty and misery.

The road from Skibbereen to Ballydehob and Skull runs along the coast mostly. All that grand rocks and great stretches of water dotted with many islands can do to make this scenery grand, wild and romantic has been done by Dame Nature. It is not satisfying to merely pass along. One would like to tarry here and get acquainted with nature in these out-of- the-way haunts of hers. The cottages are most miserable, most ruinous. There is no limestone here. It resembles Achil Island in this respect. The houses are built of stones and daubed with clay. The clay soon filters away under the combined action of winter wind and winter frost, and the houses look like piles of stones tottering to fall.

I heard of a pier being built somewhere here, with part of the Canadian money, which a priest assured me would be a great benefit to the poor people. I was very sorry to leave this part without seeing more of the country and the people. I left Skibbereen on a car for a journey by the coast the other way to meet the train at Bandon to return to Cork.

The only industry of any kind which I saw between Skibbereen and Bandon was a slate quarry which they told me shipped a great quantity of slates besides supplying local demands. As we advanced eastward we left the heather-clad mountains behind us, the landscape softened down considerably, and became almost empty of inhabitants. That reminds me that about Skull was almost emptied of inhabitants also. About the time of the great famine the people fled away. The remains of houses are scattered all along on that road. Some cause has also emptied this part of the country of people. There is much unreclaimed land here, which is not to be wondered at, seeing that a fine for reclamation was exacted in the shape of increased rent.

Clonakilty is another little town thronged with small traders and places "licensed to sell." As we passed east the long boundary walls that enclose gentlemen's plantations begin to prevail.

A little way, maybe two miles, out of Clonakilty is the property of Mr. Bence Jones, who has created some stir in the world. One hears story after story of his grasping and overbearing disposition. The chief accusation is adding to a man's rent if his father dies. Case after case of this was spoken of by the passengers on the car with me. Whether these accusations against Mr. Bence Jones were true or false, here is his place, and a very fine place it is. The lodge is at one side of the road, the entrance to his residence at the other. The residence is very nice, very commodious, and is at some distance from the road. The property is extensive, but very poor land--mountain and bog. His walled- in plantation ran along the road for quite a great distance. When they spoke of him on the car the mere mention of his name caused the driver to lose himself in profanity.