At last, after a long delay at Oughterard, we
got to the city of Galway "in time for dinner,"
before starting off by the midnight train. I have
not told of half I saw in my run. I don't think
any one can describe scenery; he can only indicate
to others what he has found worth seeing;
the best part always vanishes in description. I
wish I could describe Hynes, the driver of the
mail car, up beside whom I sat when I had
unstrapped myself that sunny morning. Not a bit
of show, yet as much quiet humour in him as in
half a score of carmen. "Much game here,
driver?" "Pretty well of that, sir, now; the
hares like the Fenians,"—because, let me
explain, of the Arms Act. How good he is, too,
about "improvements" of the breed, ending
sometimes like the attempts to better the old
Irish hen, which gives more eggs and bigger than
any of its rivals, Cochins or no Cochins, after
all. Coming in with me were a lean Lancashire
farmer and his wife. I think the man was
intending to "prospect" a farm. Anyhow, he
was full of that self-assurance which has so
constantly led the English to success, but
which is naturally offensive to those against
whom it is asserted. Nothing was right in
Connemara; he could, by doing so and so, make
the wilderness to blossom as the rose. Hynes
was too cynical to put him down, but he gave
him two or three hints by which he might have
felt, had he not been too obtuse to feel anything
but a kick, that maxims which suit one country
well are not necessarily of equal force in another.
Hynes is a sharp man; there is near, "Recess,"
the pretty wood-surrounded inn at the first stage
beyond Oughterard, a place where they have
made a good many attempts at mining. "Ah,"
said he, "if all that has been sunk in trying to
make Irish mines pay, had been laid out in
draining bogs, we should not have had the
famine so bad."

Have I made you feel anything of the
exceeding beauty and the intense solitude of the
country round Kylemore? There, where
fuchsia hedges show that man is close by, though
not seen, we pass a brood of wild ducks enjoying
themselves among the white water-lilies. A
Mr. Charles Henry, by the way, who owns a
patch of land just there, constantly keeps a
hundred men at work with his building and
planting. May his work last long, and his
capital never grow less! He has a fine patch of
the natural wood, all of which grows on the
north of the dales, sheltered from the north
wind. These woods of his are a great relief.
I can't help thinking that if the Killeries had
plantations made at intervals, there would be no
such "fiord " along the whole coast. Go and
see the grand amphitheatre of hills into which
you seem to enter as you near Leenane.
Moolreagh, one of the hills, is two thousand seven
hundred feet high, but its fine form makes it
look far higher. Why not ships in that safe
"ocean gorge" (as the tourists' book calls it),
and mills of all kinds turned by the never-failing
water-power of the hills, and a teeming
population, each with his own patch of ground,
"won from the waste," which he and his might
till "after hours"? It is melancholy to think
that nothing is done here but a little tourists'
stocking-knitting and lobster-catching; and that
if a man like  Mr. Henry stayed his hand, more
still must emigrate or go into the workhouse.
What folly! if, indeed, the strength of a
country lie in its stalwart men and hearty
women. What a sad spectacle, too, is an Irish
workhouse. It is, go where you will, the
biggest building to be seen about any country
town. Sometimes the county lunatic asylum
almost rivals it; sometimes a new convent runs
it rather hard. Convents and workhouses! I
know the two don't necessarily go together;
yet in Ireland they stand in ominous proximity,
and both look the newest samples of building
and the best. If there must be workhouses,
why not plant them in the midst of some bog,
and feed the people well, insisting at the same
time on their working well? In that way your
workhouse would soon become self-supporting.
It is astonishing how quickly most bog-land
yields a tidy crop, and people working en masse
could drain better than little cottiers working
each man for himself. The only thing needful
would be to give plenty of good food. A man
can't drain bog, or do any other useful work in
this world, on skillagolee.

Now, I've only told what I saw during this
last brief "refresher" in Connemara; I have said
nothing of the road by Lough Inagh, out of which
lake rises a precipice twelve hundred feet high;
nor of the islands, such as Inisbofin, which are
a study in themselves, both as to scenery and
antiquities; neither have I taken you to Delphi
Lodge, on the Mayo side of the Killeries, in the
glen leading to which are three small lakes, one
of which, some two miles long, well deserves
its name of Dhu Lough, for I never saw
anything so wildly gloomy as the scenery amid
which it lies. All I have wished to do is to
point the district out. There is plenty there
to occupy the pedestrian for a month; if he
have his rod in his hand, and can use it, so
much the better. The "Law Life" will charge
him ten shillings a day for the lower lakes; but
up the mountains the waters are mostly free,
and even elsewhere the rules of the "Law Life"
are not over-well enforced. My advice is, if
you go, first go well through the country by
car till you have "got its bearings." Then take
knapsack, or better, if you have the means, buy
a Connemara pony (he'll pay to export afterwards,
if you don't knock him up, which you
will be hardly able to do), and get over the
ground more quickly. Anyhow, if you do
nothing else, make the little run here indicated.
Even if you only get the twenty hours in
Connemara which I got this first week in August,
you will have seen something which few parts
of Europe, and certainly no part of the British
Islands, can parallel. There are sweeter bits at
Killarney, there are grander bits in the
Highlands, there are bits more magnificent in
Snowdonia or under Helwellyn, because you there
have higher mountains; but there are no such