Morning journal and courier., 1889-02-02

like smiles upon their poor pinehed visages they disperse through the now dArkened streets to their separate, ever-darker huts and homes.
 The road from Oughterard through Cone- mara to Cfifden by the sea reaches straight as an arrow and as white as chalk for many miles over blackened moor and bellying bog. Here and there may be seen little hut as soggy and dank as the bog itself but naught else relieves the utter dreariness of the road, save the lofty mountains to the north and west. On the morning of my tramp these were lit up gloriously by the morning sun. Faint, flmy patches of mist from the sea swirled around and between these heights and formed myriad surpassing changes, as though some magic hand were lowering, lift ing and winding gossamer veils of varying and Tesplendent color around their gray and glittering peaks. To the walkers fancy that far country behind fills with wondrous forms and seemings. But the eye again falls upon the dark, drear moor, the wretched huts and the road of binding white. At little dis tance it is filled with bevy of diminutive objects, moving to the right and left as they approach, as though hesitant of meeting hu- mankind. You sit upon capscious mile stone and await their coming. Shading your eyes and closely regarding them, you wonder if they are a pack of ragged sheep or ex- plotting, hunger-scoured goats. Patter, pat ter, batter, halting and running, on they came in zig-zag course. By the horns of the Nubian ibex, they are neither sheep nor goats! They are human beings. All are weazen-faced little, old women it seems; for they surely cannot be children, though their witeh-like heads will not reach to your own waist. They draw nearer, the larger pro- tectingly massed in front You notice their irresolution or fear; and scarcely knowing what to say, you ha1ioo loudly but kindly, "Come along, my dears, the road is all yours!' They futter bit with heads to- gether and then slide along the extremest side of the road. When almost opposite you halt them with an attempt at kindly au- thority and ask: "Where are you going, little girls?" A great din of childish cackle. pitched in key of mild reproach, surprise and merry squalor arises.
 "We bent girls, sor. Wes byes!" says the boldest of the bevy.
 "Boys!"-you gasp. "Well, we'll, boys, come over here moment"
 They look at each other scared, snickering, forward little, and in twinkling they are all in crescent. shaped half circle before you, ready for savage defense or instant flight. In heavens name, you wonder, where can another such woeful sight be seen? It is mid winter; the earth is frozen; the winds are sharp and cutting: with your own glowing blood and health and in the warm
 
 halting: but here are dozen waifs in the image of God more than half naked, bony, shriveled, white from want and hunger, bare footed, bare legged, half of them bare armed and bare headed, and, as their ragged books reveal, their way to school from the mountains and bogs, dragging their scrawny, bloodIess feet twenty miles day for faint, dim glimpse of the heaven there is in the school-room warmth and the school-room books. If you have a mans heart their spectral presences will be hidden behind the mist in your own eyes; but as it clears away their wild and extraordinary costumes star tie you. Every one of these wretched erea- lures has no more than one thickness of cloth between himself and the winter day; and that one does not half cover him. It is the Conemara mapped" flannel. The gar ment of each is no more than sach hanging from the shoulders to just above the knees, and reminding one of the bags in which the little plantation blacks of the South were formerly clad On one this will be worn into shreds throughout; another's is swathed like a half crumbling mummy; another shows patches of startling variety held to- gether by osier strands; another's is ripped and whipped and torn until his bloodless, olay-like flesh shows in score of places be- meath; while every one is hollow eyed, mat ted-haired, claw fingered cadaverous; blot on the face of the earth in Christian land and time; and if there be curse for expiation on individuals or government responsible for such horrible conditions, these pitiable wretches alone are infinitely more than need ed witnesses before the bar of man and God. You are tramp there on the milestone, but a comfortable one. In your wallet is food. You call these specters of. famine to you, divide among them all you have and watch them tear at it like savage beasts. Oh, it is pitiful! Then you beguile little heart and hope into them with simple words about the school, and call them the brave Irish lads they are; get them around you, and leaning on your knee. with your hands on their shoulders and heads, or holding their bony, icy fingers; and you tell them how they must study as you did not and not 'tmitch" Qrish for playing truant) as you did; and that sure, sure, in no far of day they will come to good mems estate, able to ssrise' their parents out of the huts and cab ins into sweet and happy homes; not forget ting the practical Christianity of emphaai- zing palaver with pence; until right there in the middle of Conemara bog miracle will be performed before your very eyes. For smbitionless beasts have been transformed into cumulative humans; and the gaunt faces, in which was no more soul than in dirty wax, has had blood and light put in them; and a shout of good cheer goes up where hell and hunger brooded.
 You stand and watch the ragged flock un- til it's white faces and rags have blended with the white of the wide, ribbon-like way :; and turn upon your tramp-tC be confronted with group of peasant women almost as meagerly clad as these their children, out still far more picturesque in their hannels of black blue and red One is armed with @ long handled turf-spade Another is dis covered secreting an old wheel-spoke under heath her cloak. Another leans upon a one- tined pitchfork. Others have clubs and cudgels. And one tall, gaunt "Meg Merrill io0 rvr 1IOna n petticoats, bears an enormous sickle. Your interest in the group binds you for a moment to their threatening aspect. They have been gathered by some swift signals from the huts along the bog, and have come prepared to see that you do not 'Ethrif1e wid the chill dre;n but having discovered that your mo- tives are friendly, no pen can describe their wise and vociferous attempts to hide their original purpose, or the cead mille failte | (with thousand welcomes) in which you are conveyed along the highway, and the | Inequalities and embarrassing honors that l are accorded you. In some weird, secret way all this seems to be flashed along in ad- vance of you, making your progress veri- | table triumphal march; until long reach of uninhabitea and savagely wild country ls | passed, through which countless outlandlsh | incidents are experienced on the road alone, | which, now winding over and up and on and | over again, at last brings you to the thresh | OlQ or the RtOflOuS W6SE6Tu ulRulAuuS.
 | You climb the loftiest near height and | feast upon the scene. Back to the east as far as the eye can reach stretches first se
 ries of ghostly foot-hill crags, and then the black and dreary bog, it's purply blackness being strangely intensified by the pallid stone road. At it's remotest thread-point art a gleasning spire or two, beyond which at the horizon rim are few jagged clumps, the desolate outlines of ruined castles. To ths south, reaching in noble undulations to Gal
 way Bay, are lines on lines of mighty hills gray, brown and purple;' with now and ther
 a vale between, where the hollow's grape like blue tells that sweet Irish tough lays smiling there. Almost at your feet to the
 north gleams bright Glendalough. Beyond
 to the west where the road skirts lofty hilli
 reaches far and fair the witching lake O
 Inagh-'sthe place of the ivy" To it's Jeff
 rise peak on peak those wondrous heights oi
 loveliness, the Twelve Pins of Bunnabeola l At the right of the lake the noble Mamturl
 mountains soar above the clouds. And fal
 past tough Inagh's vale, thirty miles to thu
 north, stands grim old Croagh Patrick like
 stupendous watch-tower above the-savsg, | west. know not what emotions come tt
 men among the glittering Alpine crags, in
 land whose utmost boundaries could be se
 within single Irish or American county
 but there are here 8 sense of such sublimit, I