THE EMERALD ISLE.
Nothing can be easier than to go from one end to the other of Ireland.
Though her network of railways is not yet complete, great arteries
radiate from Dublin in all directions and allow the island to be
traversed from end to end, whether southward, westward, or northward,
in less than seven or eight hours. The journey from south to north,
following the great axis, is longer and more complicated, for it is
necessary to change lines several times. The circular journey along the
coasts is facilitated by excellent services of open coaches, that go
through the regions not yet penetrated by railways. Lastly, one can, by
following the Shannon, enter by steamboat almost to the very heart of the
country.
When one has gone through those various excursions, completed by riding
and walking tours, and seen the island under its various aspects, one
perceives that it presents in a general manner the appearance of a
cup, with brims rising towards the sea; in other words, it consists in
a vast central plain, protected on all its circumference by groups of
hills and mountains, preventing the inroad of the ocean. Those mountains
are in no part very high; the finest, those of Kerry, do not rise above
1800 feet. But their very position on the brink of the Atlantic, the
erosions undermining their base, the deep bays they delineate, the
innumerable lakes hidden away in their bosoms, lend them a majesty far
above their altitude. Bland and smiling in Wicklow, they are in Kerry of
an unequalled serenity, while in Connemara they preserve unbroken the
rude chaos of primeval cataclysms, and display on the north of Antrim’s
table-land, towards the Giant’s Causeway, the most stupendous basaltic
formations.
Yet the normal, the truest aspect of Ireland, is represented by the
central plain—a large, unbroken surface of green undulating waves, ever
bathed in a damp and fresh atmosphere, shut in on the horizon by dark
blue mountains.
This aspect is of infinite sweetness; no land possesses it in a similar
degree. It takes possession of you, it penetrates you like a caress and
a harmony. One understands, when submitted to that entirely physical
influence, the passionate tenderness that Irishmen feel for their
country, and that is best illustrated by Moore’s poetry. The sky seems
to have endeavoured to find the true chord in response to the earth, in
order to give to all things those deliciously blended tones. The stars
are nearly always seen through a light haze, and the sun itself shines
but through a veil of vapours, into which it seems eager to disappear
again. The shadows are not hard and well defined; they melt into each
other by insensible gradations of tint. All is green, even the stones,
clothed in moss; the walls, covered with ivy; the waters, hidden under
a mantle of reeds and water-lilies. In other climes the fields, after a
spring shower, take unto themselves the bravery that here is seen in all
seasons. In the full heat of July the corn, the barley, the oats still
keep their April dress. Do they ever ripen? They say they do, towards
the end of October; but surely they never can get yellow. Yellow is not
an Irish colour, nor is white. Ireland is indeed green Erin, the Emerald
Isle. Never was name more truly given.
* * * * *
One could consider Ireland as a prodigious grass plot of some twenty
million acres, constantly watered by rain. Water is everywhere: in the
clouds that the winds of the Atlantic drive over her, and that the
highlands of Scotland and Norway stop in their course; on the soil, where
all hollows, great or small, become lakes; under the ground even, where
the roots of vegetables, saturated and swollen like sponges, slowly
change into peat. Ireland is the most liberally watered country in
Europe, and yet, thanks to the constancy of the winds over her, one can
scarcely say it is a damp country. The fall of water is on an average of
926 millimetres in a year—a little over three feet. The ground, naturally
of admirable fruitfulness, is still further favoured by the mildness and
equableness of the climate on the shores.
The flora almost recalls that of the Mediterranean coasts. The fauna
presents the remarkable peculiarity of not possessing a single dangerous
or even repulsive species—not one toad, not one reptile, except the most
innocent among them all, the “friend of man,” the lizard. Legends say
that St. Patrick, the Christian apostle of the isle, coming from Brittany
in the 6th century, threw all the serpents into the sea, and all the
toads after them; indeed, he is habitually represented in popular imagery
as engaged in performing that miracle.
* * * * *
An island possessing no backbone, and presenting generally the appearance
of a cup, cannot have great rivers. In fact, almost all the rivers of
Ireland, born within her girdle of mountains, soon lose themselves in the
sea, forming at their mouth an estuary that takes the name of _Lough_, as
do the lakes proper. One only creates an exception by the length of its
course and the volume of its waters—the Shannon, rising in the central
table-land, imprisoned, so to speak, at the bottom of the circular well,
and whose course, impeded above Limerick by a barrier of rocks, form fine
rapids, under which the waters flow in a majestic stream. With the tide,
vessels of the heaviest tonnage can go up the river to Foynes.
* * * * *
Indeed, the country lacks no harbours on those deeply indented shores.
North, west, east, and south, Ireland counts no less than fourteen
natural harbours, large enough to shelter whole fleets.
But this gift, like all the others that Fate has showered on her, seems
to have turned against her by bringing the nations of prey within those
bays. Thrown as an outwork of Europe in the middle of the ocean, she
seemed to be opening her arms to the Phœnicians, to the Scandinavians;
later on to the Arabs, the Spaniards, and the English. A gust of wind
was enough to reveal her to them; a favourable breeze to bring them back.
To understand clearly the perils of such a post, and to see how much more
still than the muzzle of Brittany, Ireland is Atlantic land, one must
go to Valencia, the small islet on which come to shore the ends of the
Transatlantic cables.
More than in any other spot of Europe one feels at the farthest end of
the world there. It seems as if, by stretching one’s arm, one would reach
the United States. And, in fact, one is near enough as it is—five or six
days by steam—almost within speaking distance with the telephone. So fast
travel the storms from America that the telegram is hardly able to arrive
before them. A sea-gull, borne on the wing of the hurricane, would cross
that arm of the sea in a few hours. The breeze that blows in your face
may have stirred the hair of a Brooklyn belle in the morning. There one
feels how very small is our globe.
* * * * *
Geologically, Ireland differs much from Great Britain. The island
appeared much earlier, and its structure is special. Alone, its northern
part, or Ulster, which, from a political point of view, forms such a
striking contrast with the rest of the island, presents between Donegal
Bay and Dundalk Bay, mountainous masses, entirely analogous with those of
Scotland, towards which they advance, and of which they appear originally
to have formed a part. They are basaltic rocks, or petrified streams of
lava, while the mountains in Kerry or Connemara are red sandstone and
slate, lying above the carbonaceous strata.
What ought, in fact, to be considered as Ireland proper consists, then,
of the eastern province or Leinster, the southern or Munster, and the
western or Connaught. Ulster is in reality, as well by the nature of
its soil as by the race and habits of the majority of its inhabitants,
an annex and dependency of Scotland. The three other provinces, on the
contrary, form a whole, as distinct from England or Scotland by the
constitution and aspect of the land, as it is different by the race,
genius, the traditions and beliefs of the population.
* * * * *
The most striking thing on a first sight of the Irish landscape is the
total absence of trees of any kind. They are only seen in private parks.
As far as the eye can see the plains spread in gentle undulations,
covered with grass and intersected with stone walls; no single oak, elm,
or shrub ever comes to break its monotony. The tree has become a lordly
ensign. Wherever one sees it one may be certain the landlord’s mansion is
not far.
That radical disappearance of the forests, in a country once covered with
them, is singular. A great many explanations have been given of this
fact,—explanations that went back as far as some geological cataclysm.
Such theories are no longer acceptable in these days. The most likely
supposition is that all the available timber has gradually been felled
down for domestic uses, and that indifference, poverty, incessant war,
incertitude as to the present or future, have, from the remotest times,
prevented those sad gaps being repaired.
On the lower land the absence of timber is explained of itself by
the apparition of deep layers of turf, whose depth is sometimes from
forty-five to sixty feet, in which whole oak trees have been discovered
in a more or less advanced state of carbonisation. At a certain stage of
this transformation the ligneous tissue has become of such flexibility
that the Irish cut it into stripes and use it to make straps, fishing
nets, bands of all kinds,—not to mention the pious trifles, pipes, small
figures carved with a knife, and various _souvenirs_ with which they
pester the tourist.
The turf pits are a great source of riches for Ireland, and furnish the
only fuel commonly used by the lower classes. In the country one sees
everywhere people engaged in extracting peat, cutting it into cakes,
erecting these cakes in pyramids to be allowed to dry in the sun, or
transporting them from one place to the other. The people working at it
are, indeed, almost the only ones visible in the fields. One might think
that the extracting and manipulating of the turf were the only industry
of the country.
There are two kinds of turf, the red and the black, according to the
degree of carbonisation attained by the layers, and the nature of the
vegetable matter that formed them. The finest is of such intense and
brilliant black, that it might almost be mistaken for coal. Those vast
reservoirs of fuel, known in Ireland by the name of _bog_, are a constant
feature of the landscape in the valleys of the mountainous girdle as in
the lower parts of the plain. The total depth of these open carbon mines
is estimated at no less than sixty million cubic feet; they occupy an
area almost equal to the seventh part of the total superficies of the
island, and the lakes cover another seventh part.
* * * * *
One other striking peculiarity of the scenery in Ireland is the scarcity
of cultivated fields. One can count them, dotted here and there, almost
always planted with oats, potatoes, or turnips. The statistics of the
Agricultural Society give, in round numbers, for twenty millions of acres
of total surface, five millions, or a quarter in cultivated ground; that
is, 150,000 acres only in cereals, 350,000 in turnips, one million and a
half in potatoes, two million in artificial meadows. Ten million of acres
are in natural meadows; the rest are fallow lands, bog or turf, waste
land, roads and highways.
Those roads and highways, as well as the bridges and all the public
works depending upon the English Government, are admirably kept. It is
clear that on that point Dublin Castle is resolved to give no handle to
criticism. Those splendid tracks of road, laid across waste and desert
land, even produce a curious effect, and one would be tempted to see an
affectation about it, did they not, in the majority of cases, lead to
some magnificent private property, spreading as far as one can see over
hill and dale, always shut in by stone walls eight or ten feet high,
enclosing an area of several miles.
As for the conveyances that are seen on these Appian Ways they are of
two kinds; either the smart carriage whose cockaded coachman drives
magnificent horses, or the diminutive cart drawn by a small donkey,
carrying, besides the grand-dame or child that drives it, a sort of
conical-shaped utensil held in its place with cords and oftener filled
with water than with milk. One must go to Morocco or Spain to see donkeys
in such numbers as in Ireland.
* * * * *
One thing surprises in those endless pastures—it is to count so few
grazing beasts on them. Not that they are altogether excluded; now and
then one perceives on the intense green of the fields reddish or white
spots that are cattle or sheep, the rounded haunch of a mare, the awkward
frolics of a foal. On the brinks of rivers that one can almost always
cross wading, one sometimes sees a few happy cows, their feet in the
water, wide-eyed and munching dreamily. Here and there one sees geese,
hens escorted by their chicks, pigs fraternally wallowing with children
in the muddy ditch. But in a general way the landscape is wanting in
animated life, and as poor in domestic animals as in labourers.
As a contrast game is plentiful, as is natural in a land that is
three-quarters uncultivated, where it is forbidden to carry arms, and
where shooting is the exclusive privilege of a very small minority. Hares
and rabbits seem to enjoy their immunity to the utmost, and everywhere
their white breeches are seen scudding away in the dewy grass like
fireworks.
* * * * *
Villages are rare, and rarer still is farmhouse or homestead. Undulating
ridges succeed to undulating ridges and still one sees no trace of
any dwellings. One might think that these stone walls radiating over
the fields had sprung there of their own accord, and that the hay is
doomed to rot standing, after feeding the butterflies. Yet that cannot
be—evidently some one must come now and then to cut this grass, make it
into stacks and carry it away.... At last, by dint of stretching neck
and legs you succeed in discovering far away on the horizon a spire
that belongs to a big borough, a market-town rather, where those civic
tillers of the soil dwell in houses similar to those of the _liberties_
in Dublin.
As for the mud cabin, generally described as the Irish peasant’s only
home, it is now a thing of the past. One would hardly, and after much
research, find some specimens of it in the farthest counties, at the end
of Kerry or Mayo.
True to say, when found, those specimens leave nothing to be desired for
poverty and discomfort; no fire-place, no windows, no furniture; nothing
but a roof of turf supported by a few poles on mud walls. The very pig
that formerly shared its luxuries with the _genus homo_ and indicated a
certain degree of relative comfort in his possessor, the pig himself has
disappeared for ever.
But those are exceptions, almost pre-historic cases. As a rule the mud
cabin has been blotted out from the Irish soil—perhaps enlightened
landlords systematically pursued its eradication; perhaps the peasants,
tired of its tutelary protection, emigrated under other skies,—or more
simply still, they took advantage of the last famine to die of hunger.
Upon which came the rain, and two or three years sufficed to dilute the
walls, render the mud house to the common reservoir, and wash out its
very remembrance.
The population of Ireland, it must be borne in mind, has been steadily
decreasing for half a century. It was of 8,175,124 inhabitants in 1841;
of 6,552,385 in 1851; 5,798,584 in 1861; 5,412,377 in 1871; and 5,174,836
in 1881. By all appearances it must now have sunk under five millions. If
this fish-eating race was not the most prolific under the sun it would
have been blotted out long ago from the face of this planet.