few years ago, and the track hugs the coast as closely as possible. An
hour after leaving Galway nature begins to disclose her unfriendliness,
the mountains begin to loom up to a height of two thousand and
twenty-two hundred feet, the landscape becomes stern and forbidding, and
there is no vegetation except heather, which, when in full bloom, adds a
purple hue to the wilderness. Heather seems to be as brave, as enduring,
and as self-reliant as the sage brush that decorates the arid plains of
our western States, and nothing seems to discourage its growth.
Alternating with the rocks are peat beds, in which both men and women
spend much time getting out a supply of fuel for the next winter and
stacking it in little piles to dry.
The most prominent feature of the landscape is a group of mountains
called the Twelve Bens--sometimes written the "Twelve Pins." They are so
called because of their conical, dome-like peaks and the similar
individuality of each. They rise almost from the level of the Atlantic,
and for that reason look higher than they really are. The highest is Ben
Baun, 2,393 feet, and the lowest is Ben Brach, 1,922 feet. Their sides
are scarred with the wounds of terrestrial convulsions and glacial
action, and they are composed very largely of quartzite, which
frequently furnishes a white surface that glistens in the sunlight and
adds to the picturesque effect. From these mountains comes the Connemara
marble, the most valuable stone in the United Kingdom, often as fine in
grain as the malachite and lapis lazuli of the Urals and the onyx of
Mexico. It is used both for construction and for ornamental purposes,
and the quarries are very profitable.
[Illustration: A SCENE IN CONNEMARA]
The landscape is dotted with little lakes and ponds which have no
visible outlet, but are all connected somehow underground. Most of them
cover only an acre or two, but Lough Corrib is the largest in Ireland
except Lough Neagh, near Belfast. Lough Mask and Lough Cong are also
several miles in length and two or three miles in width. There are said
to be 365 lakes in Ireland, and one would judge that the larger number
of them are in Connemara. They are fed by springs and rainfall and are
said to abound in fish. The railway companies advertise this as the best
fishing ground in the world, and announce that they have leased several
of the loughs in order to provide free fishing to all excursionists.
That is a great attraction for city people when they take their
vacations, because elsewhere as a rule when a man wants to go fishing he
is compelled to take out a license and pay handsomely for the
privilege--from $2.50 to $5 a day. Therefore the advertisements of free
fishing in Connemara, combined with the scenery, which is highly admired
and considered second only to that of Switzerland, tempt a great many
people there. But most of them are disappointed. There is plenty of
water to fish in, there are plenty of boats to hire, but fish are
scarce, and, no matter where you go, the oldest inhabitant always
insists that he never knew a time when fishing was so bad as it is now.
There are many skeptics and a few cynics about who give you a true
statement of the situation. "Boots" at the hotel asserted that if
anything could be caught in the lakes we might be sure that the fishing
would not be free, and added sarcastically that the only reason it was
free was that nobody ever caught anything.
The O'Briens were once kings of that country and they were driven out by
the O'Flahertys, who in turn were driven out by the English. You can see
the ruins of Castle Bally Quirk, the principal fortress of the
O'Flahertys, from the car window, and read the terrible story of how the
chief of that clan was imprisoned in its keep in the time of Queen
Elizabeth and starved to death. The O'Flahertys were always "agin the
government," and were so impertinent in their replies and so arrogant in
their demeanor that Queen Elizabeth decided to bring them to submission,
and nearly exterminated the family before she did so. "The O'Flaherty,"
the head of the family at present, is a justice of the peace, who lives
at Lemonfield, upon the ancient estates, but retains very little of
them.
If Clifden wasn't such a dirty town it might be made a popular health
resort. The air is glorious; the natural surroundings are grand and
would tempt many artists as well as admirers of scenery. There are
excellent small hotels, but the town is decidedly unattractive, the
streets are filthy, the walks in the neighborhood of the town are used
so much by the cattle that they are quite unclean, and the people do not
seem to have any idea of neatness or order. The principal business seems
to be the sale of liquor, which can be purchased at thirty-three places
within this little town of eight hundred people, as advertised by the
sign boards. And they all look as if they were doing a good trade. There
is considerable fishing at Cleggan, a neighboring village, which has
been encouraged and assisted by the government, and large shipments of
fish are made to Dublin every day. Early in the morning several ancient
fishwives appear in a triangular space between the rows of houses in the
center of the village with baskets of fish, and from our windows in the
comfortable Railway Hotel we can see the inhabitants come strolling
along in an indolent and indifferent manner to buy their breakfasts.
They have the choice of a variety of fish, and the prices are remarkably
low. A fine, fat mackerel costs a penny, a codfish sixpence, and for a
shilling one can get a haddock big enough to last a large-sized family
for a week.
Upon the hillside overlooking the town is an imposing church which has
an air of magnificence in comparison with the rest of the town; it is
ten times as large and ten times as glorious for Clifden as St. Peter's
is for Rome. It was built only a few years ago from the contributions of
the peasants, the same people that the government is trying to make
comfortable and aid in earning a living. It will seat nine hundred
people and is filled twice on Sunday with devout worshipers. Father
Lynch, the curate, told me that it was necessary to have two masses and
sometimes three on Sunday to accommodate them all, and some of them come
eleven and even twelve miles, most of them on foot, to attend worship.
Here, as everywhere in Ireland, religion is the first and most important
thing in life, and the church is the gateway to happiness and Heaven.
There is also a Protestant church, much smaller, but not insignificant,
which stands upon an opposite hill, surrounded by a graveyard, in which
there are some venerable tombs.
Clifden is the seat of several important families, including the
Martins, who formerly lived at Ballynaninch Castle, a plain, large,
stern-looking embattled building, which was the scene of Charles Lever's
novel, "The Martins of Cro' Martin." It was the home of Col. Richard
Martin, M.P., the inventor and organizer of the first society for the
prevention of cruelty to animals in the world, and the author of
"Martin's Acts," punishing those who are guilty of that offense. He
spent large sums of money in the enforcement of this law and in
organizing societies and establishing hospitals for diseased and wounded
animals throughout the kingdom, but was otherwise extravagant and went
through his fortune.
Colonel Martin was the original of "Godfrey O'Malley," the hero of
Lever's novel, and the sketch is said to be very accurate. He was a
reckless, extravagant, but generous, warm-hearted man and died a
sacrifice to his efforts to relieve the sufferings of his tenants at the
time of the famine.
His only child, Mary Martin, married an American, Colonel Bell of New
York, and lived in that city until her death. Although she was known as
the Princess of Connemara and inherited an empire in area, she was never
able to maintain the state that her father was so proud of, and 192,000
acres of her vast domain was sold by the courts to settle his debts,
being purchased by the Law Life Assurance Company. Richard Berridge, a
London brewer, bought another tract of 160,000 acres and the young woman
scarcely missed it, so extensive were her lands. But they were of little
value, being mostly mountain peaks and barren moors. Colonel Martin once
silenced the prince regent, who during the early part of Queen
Victoria's reign was boasting of the famous Long Walk of Windsor, by
scornfully declaring that the avenue which led from his front gate to
his hall door was thirty miles long; and that was very nearly the truth.
Clifden Castle is the seat of the De Arcy family, who built and owned
the town of Clifden and were formerly very rich, but a very little is
seen of them at present.
Marconi's wireless telegraph station occupies a bleak, rocky promontory
extending out into the sea about three miles from the village. It is
surrounded by a large tract of barren moor and is inclosed in barbed
wire fence, which no one is allowed to pass without a permit. There are
several corrugated iron buildings, comfortable but temporary, for
generating furnaces, offices, and dormitories for Mr. Marden, the
superintendent, and seven assistants. There is a miniature railway
connecting them with the harbor to bring up coal and other supplies from
the bay, for it requires a lot of fuel to generate the tremendous
voltage necessary to throw a message across the Atlantic Ocean. When the
operators are sending a Marconigram the sound can be heard for half a
mile--a deafening whirr and buzz like that of a sawmill, interspersed
with sharp detonations, long and short, according to the dots and dashes
of the Morse code. An ordinary operator could read the message a long
distance away, but would not be able to understand it because every word
is sent in cipher. This is the reason why people are kept out of the
grounds and why so large an area is necessary for protection. The
station is a profitable thing for the town, because about fifteen
hundred dollars a month is spent for supplies and labor, and employment
is given to a large gang of men.
After several romantic engagements to American girls, Signor Marconi
finally married a local beauty, Miss O'Brien, daughter of "The O'Brien,"
the representative of the family that were kings over this country in
the early days.
[Illustration: CLIFDEN CASTLE, COUNTY GALWAY]
As Clifden is the terminus of the railway, we cruised around the
rockbound coast of the Atlantic and across the bleak mountain sides to
Westport, in what they call an "excursion car"--an exaggerated jaunting
car on four wheels, drawn by two horses, with seats for six
passengers on each side and a cavity in the center between them, opening
from the end like a hearse, in which the baggage is carried. It is one
of the most uncomfortable vehicles you can imagine. None of the
passengers can see more than half the scenery, as they sit back to back
and face out toward either side of the road. The ordinary jaunting car
is quite as awkward and uncomfortable, and if you take a drive to see
the scenery you have to go over the road twice because you can see only
half of it at a time.
The scenery in Connemara reminds one very much of Norway except in the
lack of the cleanliness for which the latter country is famous. The
coast line is cut by deep jags and precipitous cliffs, like the fiords,
and the mountains have the same stern and stony appearance, and the peat
bogs that lie between them are similar to those in the Scandinavian
countries, although the climate is much milder here. The fuchsia plant
is commonly used for hedges, which all summer long is loaded with
blossoms of purple and red. I had never seen a fuchsia hedge until I
came to Ireland. The first was at Glengariff, on the southern coast, but
since then we have found them everywhere along the Atlantic shore, in
the western counties, hundreds of miles of them, inclosing pastures,
meadows, and gardens and growing with wonderful luxuriance.
There is no fruit in Ireland, or at least very little. I didn't see a
respectable orchard all summer and saw no fruit trees except a few
cherries and plums in gardens. Gooseberries seem to be the only "fruit
of the season" at the hotels, and gooseberry tart is served for luncheon
and for dinner every day. There are a few strawberries, but they are
very expensive and are sold by the pound. They are never served upon the
regular _table d'hôte_ bills of fare, but are always extra.
We were told the Connemara was very picturesque, and the most
interesting section of Ireland, both in scenery, in local color, and in
costumes, but it is a disappointment in all three respects. The scenery
is grand, as mountains always are, but it is very monotonous; the people
are so poor and so dirty that they repel, and we seldom see them at
work, except in the peat fields as we pass. The Connemara peasant woman
always wears a red skirt, goes barefooted, and covers her tousled head
under a heavy shawl. She works alongside of the men and does her share
of the heavy as well as the light labor. She is expected to do as much
manual labor as her husband or her brother, and judging from what we
observed in the peat bogs, they give her the heavy end of the load.
We spent the night at Leenane, a little fishing village at the head of a
fiord that comes up nine miles from the Atlantic into the mountains.
There is a plain but good hotel, much patronized by fishermen. In the
morning we continued our journey over the mountains through some very
rugged country. We drove through the famous Pass of Kylemore, one of the
most beautiful pieces of scenery in Ireland, and called "The Gem of
Connemara." It was particularly interesting to us because Kylemore
Castle is the home of an American girl, the Duchess of Manchester, who
was formerly Miss Helena Zimmerman of Cincinnati and is now the wife of
the Duke of Manchester. It is one of the most beautiful residences in
Ireland, and is situated upon the banks of a lovely little lake and at
the base of a mountain called Doughraugh, which rises 1,736 feet behind
it as a background and is covered with the most beautiful foliage. The
castle is in the center of the pass, between two lofty mountains, and
the roadway for miles passes through a forest and between fields that
are inclosed with fuchsia hedges.
[Illustration: A SCENE IN THE WEST OF IRELAND; LENANE HARBOR]
Kylemore Castle was built by Mr. Mitchell Henry, a home rule member of
parliament in the '60's, about a hundred years ago, and cost him more
than a million dollars. The chapel, which cost more than a hundred
thousand dollars, was built by his son, who sold the place to the Duke
of Manchester. As the latter was not able to pay for it, his
father-in-law, Mr. Zimmerman, a railroad magnate of Cincinnati,
president of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad, took it off his
hands for £69,000 and presented it to his daughter, who spends most of
her time there, because the climate is very agreeable throughout the
entire year and she loves the seclusion. There isn't a neighbor for
several miles, except the people employed on the place. There are
fourteen thousand acres of shooting, several small lakes, and about
forty acres in garden.
This is the kingdom of Grace O'Malley, the famous Amazon daughter of
Owen O'Malley, King of Connaught. She lived and reigned here in the time
of Queen Elizabeth, and her castle is now used as a police barracks.
While some of the legends of Grace O'Malley are doubtless fiction, many
of them are founded upon fact. She was a real woman and a real queen
with pride and power and all the other qualities that are attached to
royalty. Queen Elizabeth, to whom she once paid a visit, offered to make
her a countess, but Grace declined on the ground that the Queen of
Connaught was the equal of the Queen of England, and could accept no
favors. Her first husband was an O'Flaherty and her second was Sir
Richard Burke. The second was a "trial marriage," and it was agreed that
after the end of one year the union could be dissolved by either husband
or wife saying, "I dismiss you," to the other, and Grace said it first.
We passed around the base of the mountain Crough Patrick, which rises
with great abruptness to a height of 2,510 feet, almost directly from
the Atlantic Ocean, and has a flat plain about half a mile square upon
its summit. There are the remains of an ancient chapel, and a large
Celtic cross stands boldly in the foreground, where it can be seen from
all the country round. This is one of the most sacred spots in Ireland,
because, according to Monk Jocelyn, who wrote a life of St. Patrick in
the twelfth century, and other historians, that most venerated saint
"brought together here all the demons, toads, serpents, creeping things,
and other venomous creatures in Ireland and imprisoned them in a deep
ravine on the sea front of the mountain known as Lugnademon (the pen of
the demons) as fast as they came in answer to his summons, and kept them
safely there until he was ready to destroy them. Then, standing upon the
summit of the Crough, St. Patrick, with a bell in hand, cursed them and
expelled them from Ireland forever. And every time he rang the bell
thousands of toads, adders, snakes, reptiles, and other noisome things
went down, tumbling neck and heels after each other, and were swallowed
up forever in the sea." A less reverent writer says:
"'Twas on the top of the high hill
St. Patrick preached his sarmints;
He drove the frogs from all the bogs
And banished all the varmints."
It is a well-known phenomenon in natural history that there are no
snakes, toads, moles, or venomous reptiles in Ireland, and the fact has
always been accounted for in this way. St. Patrick's miracle, performed
at the summit of the Crough, in County Mayo, in the year 450, is
accepted with as perfect faith as the story of the creation, and on the
anniversary, during the month of July, thousands of pilgrims climb to
the ruined chapel, some of them on their knees, to pray to the patron
saint of Ireland.
As Westport is the nearest town of importance in Ireland to the United
States, there have been several projects to take advantage of that fact
by running a line of steamers from there. The distance to St. John, New
Brunswick, is 1,656 miles; to Halifax, 2,165 miles; to Boston, 2,385
miles, and to New York, 2,700 miles, which in each case is much less
than from Queenstown or any of the English ports. At the same time,
however, passengers landing there would be subjected to a long railway
journey and would be required to cross St. George's Channel, which is
not an amiable streak of water. It is subject to the same moods and
tenses as the English Channel, and whoever crosses it must make
sacrifices to Neptune in the form of discomfort if not other tribute. A
company was formed some years ago to build docks here and to build
steamers, but nothing has been heard from it of late, and the invention
of the turbine engine and the construction of the fast steamers like the
_Lusitania_ make the voyage quite as short without the other drawbacks.
The Marquis of Sligo has his seat at Westport and is one of the largest
landowners in Ireland, but he does not spend much time here. He prefers
his townhouse at 10 Hyde Park Place, London. The greater part of his
land is entirely worthless. He owns many square miles of rock, moorland,
and mountain peaks in Connemara, which furnish admirable scenery but are
good for nothing else. As General Sheridan once said of another place,
under other circumstances, "It would be necessary for a crow to take his
rations with him," if he attempted to make the journey across his
lordship's estates. There is more waste land to the acre in Connemara
than in any other part of the United Kingdom, and the Marquis of Sligo
owns the largest share of it.
The Marquis of Sligo owns the town of Westport, and it is built around
the entrance to his beautiful park. He is more generous than most of the
earls, because he allows the public free of charge and without
restriction to enjoy it with him. The gates are always open to young and
old, rich and poor,--on foot, on bicycle, or in vehicles, except
automobiles. He has a prejudice against them and they are not allowed to
enter.
Across the roadway from the main entrance and nailed to the wall of an
old-fashioned house is an ancient signboard, upon which are inscribed
the tolls formerly demanded by the Marquis of Sligo upon the sales of
produce in the market of this town. He owns the place; the land all
belongs to him, and that which is not occupied by his houses pays him
ground rent perpetually. He owns the market place, and instead of
charging rental to the farmers who come there to sell their produce he
used to tax each sale a penny for a dozen eggs, a penny for a chicken,
tuppence for a sack of potatoes, and so on. There is a long list upon
the signboard giving the exact toll for every article and animal that
entered into the traffic of the market place, fish, fowl, fruit,
vegetables, grain, and all other things. He owns the fair grounds also,
and in olden times collected ten per cent of all the premiums and prizes
that were awarded, and a corresponding toll upon the cattle that were
bought and sold at the monthly and annual fairs. And this custom
prevailed all over Ireland, until 1881, when the people decided that
they would not submit to it any longer, and therefore refused to pay the
collector when he came around. Finally, after a popular agitation which
resulted in a good many broken heads and some loss of life, parliament
abolished the privilege, and the tolls collected in the market houses
now go into the common treasury.
Westport is the residence of Rev. J.M. Hannay, rector of the Church of
Ireland here, who is better known to the world as George A. Birmingham,
author of several political novels which have caused a great stir and
have had an important influence upon land legislation. Mr. Hannay is an
ardent patriot, but has the judicial faculty of looking upon both sides
of a question, and in the vivid pictures he has drawn of the scenes and
events and consequences of the land wars, stripping the screens from the
motives of the leaders, he has convinced thousands of people where
ordinary arguments would have entirely failed. His novel entitled "The
Seething Pot" has frequently been recommended to me by the highest
authorities as the best picture of Irish politics that was ever written.
There has always been a good deal of literary talent up this way. The
County of Longford, just south of here, was the birthplace and home of
two of the most famous of Irish writers,--Maria Edgeworth and Oliver
Goldsmith. It is quite remarkable that both should have derived their
early love and their knowledge of the Irish character from the same
identical parish. Both received their early education at the same
school, and the little hamlet Pallasmore, where the author of "The Vicar
of Wakefield" first saw the light, is still, as it was in his time, the
property of the Edgeworth family. It is now only a group of humble
cabins. The house in which the poet was born, Nov. 10, 1728, long ago
disappeared and there is not a relic left of himself or his family.
Later Rev. Charles Goldsmith, his father, removed to the rectory of
Kilkenny West, six miles from the city of Athlone. There the poet spent
his boyhood days, and there his brother, Rev. Henry G. Goldsmith,
continued to reside after his father's death. And he was residing there
when Oliver dedicated to him his poem, "The Traveler."