Morning journal and courier., 1889-01-26
ABOUT IN IRELAND.

SAS~S~S>~ -e~~~ N>~--~~~ ~ question"
 ABOUT IN IRELAND.
 Scenery Around Onshtsrard-The Dis-
 trict of Conemara-The Surstng,
 Rushing Speed of an Irish sLong
 Cars'-BilloNy Hills Of lar Con-
 naught-Irish Benedictions.
 OUGHTERARD, Ireland, Jan. 7. To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 Connaught has been most truthfully de- scribed as "the western, smallest, least pop ulous, least reclaimed, least known and most misunderstood of the four provinces of Irs- land" It comprises the five counties of Lei trim, Roscommon, Sligo, Mayo and Galway. The river Shannon winds along it's eastern boundaries. To the north Donegal Bay sets in between the crags as if to wrench it from the mainland at one gulp of the sea. Gal way Bay, breaking through from between the white heights of Aran Islands, Hanks it menacingly upon the south. The most tu- multuous seas known to the worlds shore lines eternally battle with jagged headlands upon the west. And within it are the no- blest lakes, the loveliest moors, the widest mountains, most hideous bogs, most entran- cing burns, widest reaches of rocks, sweet est dingles, most fascinating coves and bays, grandest and fewest roads, loveliest ruins, greatest castles, most wretched huts, quaint est structures in habitatien, bridge-arch, chapel and inn, daintiest hamlets, and the bravest, simplest, noblest. humblest, wild est and strangest people in the same area within Ireland, or in any explored land where people go or live.
 Rosoommon, Leitrim, Sligo and Mayo each these, especially in their eastern parishes, Irish city and country life are much the same as throughout sweet, warm Munster of the south. bright, active Leinster of the east, and hard, pretentious Ulster of the north. But who ever painted, or ever can paint, this Connaught as a whole, or reveal to one who has not felt through actual life within it its ever-savage presence to the eye and its intan- gible inner and under pathetic sweetness and fascination to the true, real sense and souli This outer savsgery of presence, which one cannot throw of, however pleasurable sight and scene may be, has largely been e creation of ignorance. The human activities of Ire- land for twenty centuries, SO far as best known to men, have been in the hardy north, the commercial east and the bsy-studded, town-dotted south. The west of Ireland, even with it's old metropolis of Galway, trad ing so largely with the Mediterranean ports, was always held to be a terra incognita of strange and forbidding mysteries. The old pagan ruins were more numerous here. In the popular fancy, strange, savage folk, de- scended from strange, savage chieftains, still roved at will in its mountain fastnesses; Queen Nayey and her bsrbaric rule seemed still an existing actuality. The horrors of the old seven-years' war bstweed Connaught and Ulster seemed a dim, vague but certain perpetuity over here behind the Shannon. Cromwell's soldiers gave all this added em- phasis by their brutal cries of. "To hell or Connaughtl" while driving the people of the fair valleys between Meath and Longford to the wi1ds of far, fierce Connaught. Poets wrote direful rhymes of this unknown land. Humor made it known as geographically west of the law" And fiction placed it among the lands in which the imagination alone could wander without hurt or harm. That which was imagined true of all Con- naught was held to be true with intensest particularly in little Conemara, until the cu- initiative dread of it all built a wall between the world and this, the fairest, quaintest, most entrancing spot within 1t; where tn 6 and where one's heart cannot but be touched by the ruggedness of spirit, simplicity of lives, bravery of poverty and the warmth of welcome that show clear to every earnest one that comes.
 Conemara proper is but district in coun- ty Galway, perhaps thirty-fve miles in its greatest length, and but twenty-five in it's vii o1r nuf off frOpo rr,eir | land by the splendid loughs Mask and Cor rib. It comprises three districts, or appel l lative divisions, named lar Connaught or Far Connaught, Joyoes Country, so called from l the predominance of that name among it's | inhabitants, and Conemara proper in the ex- l treme west upon the sea. Yet this trihing | tract of three hundred and fifty thousand l acres, as we in America measure areas, has l over one hundred and fifty miles of shore l line upon navigable lakes, the largest of I which are Mask and Corrib. It possesses 1 twenty-five navigable lakes over a mile in | length, besides hundreds of smaller, deep. ! water loughs. It's several hundred bogs, yer itable peat-banks if drained, could furnish Ireland with fuel for thousand years. Its | white and rose marbles, and precious serpen. tine precisely like the verde antico of Italy, are among the most renowned and least used l in all Europe. It has between twenty and thirty safe and capacious harbors. It's noun. ! tains are almost numberless, and are as full
 of grandeur and sublimity in scenery as ths ] Scottish Highlands. So deeply and often ii 1t penetrated by great arms of the sea that this little patch of Erin possesses between four and five hundred miles of coast-line un
 surpassed in wild and glorious scenic splen.
 dor. About forty thousand people snbsis
 along it's shores upon fishing and within iti
 wilds like meager goats upon Alpine crags ] And it possesses just two roads which art
 not the original foot and bridle-paths over
 which the ancient toparchs, yclept O'Conol
 Dhunne, O'Conor Sligo, O'Conor Ruadh ant O'Conor Phaby, chased each other back ant
 forth until extinct through their sanguinar.
 contests over the rival merits of their auces
 tors of the ''hrown hair" and "the red.
 One of these old bridle paths once suddenl. l became famous through bit of sly Irish re
 partee. Colonel Martin, mountain propri
 etor, when on occasion guest of the Prime
 of Wales, while being shown the marvels o
 Windsor Park by the latter, bore the burdel
 of magnifcenoe for @ time, when, to quietl put royalty out of conceit with itself, he re
 torted: sThis is all very wonderful for Eng
 land; but you could set it in the corner Q , an Irish f1ower-bed. The avenue leading t !, my own hall-door in Conemara is upwards Q