trace of the old furrows all along the slopes of
the hills.

"All the people worth anything are dead
or gone," said the English fisherman: he has
been there every year for the last thirteen
years, and so he ought to know. "Those who
are left are either too weak to do a good day's
work, or too demoralised to care to try." But
I don't want to be political, so let me call on
you to admire this chain of lakes sparkling in
the sun, some studded with islets, some with
their banks richly wooded, for wood will grow
(if people have patience) at any rate here and
there in Connemara. Glan-da-loch, on Garromin
Lake, is a case in point. Here Dean Mahon
added to the "natural wood," and (as the
guidebooks say) the place, now a hotel, "is the only
cheering spot in the waste between Oughterard
and Ballynahinch."

At Ballynahinch Dick Martin ruled. We all
remember Martin, of Martin's Act; and, locally,
others of the name were equally famous. One
had a great fancy for putting down "patterns,"
and got terribly beaten at a fair where he
attempted in person to stop the head-breaking.
They are gone. The ruined heiress of the last
Martin was drowned miserably as she was going
with her betrothed to America after the famine
had done its worst. How many emigrant ships
strangely came to grief in those sad times!
The old O'Flaherty's castle on the island
—which Colonel Martin used as his prison, and
out of which outlaw Burke made him give up a
famous Terry-Alt by bringing a wild troop of
Mayo men round the colonel's house and threatening
to burn him in it if the prisoner was not
released—is no longer tenanted. All this
time I have had on my left hand the flattened
hills of "Joyce's country," old land of giants
now unhappily almost extinct, and the "twelve
Pins," the highest of which is two thousand
four hundred feet high, but which look much
higher because of their rugged forms, and
because they rise so steeply out of the flat
valley.

Before nine I get to Clifden, and breakfast at
Mullarkey's hotel, with "appointments" quite
luxurious after those to which I have been accustomed
in Clare. The waiter, a Tipperary boy who
boasts that he always speaks the thing that is,
urges me to take the round planned out by the
lady-clerk aforesaid. "There's nothing to see
here," says he. "If you were going to bathe
for some time it's a very nice place; or if you
wanted to look over the schools, now, and see
how the two religions get on together, I might
recommend it. But your best plan is to do as
she told you; and" (here came out the reason
for his anxiety) "I've got two clergymen who'll
be very glad to join you in a car." I am happy
to state that my "clergymen" were Dublin
priests; if that diocese numbers many like
them, it is far happier in its priests than some
of the dioceses further south seem to be. They
were gentlemen in every sense of the word, and
highly educated withal. And now began the
loveliest drive I have ever had in my life, not
the most wonderful, of course, for there are no
snow-mountains here; but the shapes of glen,
and mountain, and lake, and sea-inlet, are so
beautiful and so varying that I am sure there
is nothing in the three kingdoms to match them.
Ireland has often been called the ugly picture
in the beautiful frame; and hence it may be that
its beauty, where it is beautiful, is so continuous.
Even in Snowdonia there are every now and
then uninteresting patches. How large these
are in Scotland every walking tourist knows to
his sorrow. Here there is no break in the
lovely wildness. The interest never flags the
whole way, as you sweep round by Streamstown
Bay and half a dozen other coves, and, passing
Letterfrack and Kylemore, with its two lakes,
get at last to that grand gulf, the Killeries.
Every look forward or back gave us some new
bit of beauty. It was almost fatiguing, from the
constant demand on the attention, either to
mark islands glinting far out on the sunny sea,
or natural woods of birch and dwarf oaks, or long
slopes of green down the whole stretch of a
mountain-side, or patches of purple heather, or
tufts by the roadside of that large-belled Irish
heath which is only found on the western coast.
We had splendid weather, just cloud enough to
give us shadows drifting over the mountains,
along with a sun so hot and bright as to make
everything rejoice except the car-horse as he
was toiling up-hill. Of course we could have
done better with more wood. The beauty of
it where it has been planted only made us
the more regret that old Irish landlords were
not of the mind of that canny Scot whose
advice to his son was, "Be aye dibblin' in
a tree, Jock, while ye're haudin' clavers wi'
ony ane. They'll grow, d'ye mind, while ye're
sleeping."

Leenane, at the head of the Killeries bay, is
a place I should like to stay a week at, if
I had free fishing, and also a yacht to sail
down the gulf whenever I felt so minded.
Instead of that, I only stay there ten minutes,
enough time to get another car, and to buy from
some ingenuous little girls Connemara stockings
at one shilling a pair—wonderfully cheap, they
tell me at home, and are vexed that I didn't buy
up the whole stock—and a pennyworth of Irish
diamonds from a dear little boy. He only asked
a penny, and I didn't like to "spoil him" by
giving more. More beauties, and ever fresh
ones, bring us to Maam, where is the hotel of
which Lord Leitrim, by way of illustrating Irish
hospitality, secured all the rooms in order that
his enemy, Lord Carlisle, might not be able to
stay the night there. The innkeeper has lately
died a sad death. He got drunk at a fair, and
was taken home and put to bed; but, as he
became very violent, they locked him into the
room, leaving him a candle by the bedside at
which to light his pipe. By-and-by they heard
screams, but attributed them to his drunken
efforts to get out. When they did go to look,
they found him so fearfully burnt that he died
in a day or two after. The Irish short pipe, by
the way, seldom causes any accident, despite