for the first four
miles, relic of the beneficent Balfour--winding by the river side for
the rest of the journey, through fat meadows dotted with thriving
kine, and having a background of richly-wooded hills. At Carrickrohane
your left is bounded by a huge precipitous rock, covered from base to
summit with ivy and other greenery, a great grey building on the very
brink of the abyss, flanked by Scotch firs, peering over the
precipice. A fine stone bridge, garrisoned by salmon-fishers, leads to
the Anglers' Rest, and here I found a splendid character, one Dennis
Mulcahy, who boasted of his successful resistance to the Land League.
Having told me of his adventures in America, and how his oyster-bar
experiences in the Far West had opened his eyes to the fact that the
Irish people were being humbugged, he narrated his return to his
native land, on his succession to a small farm left him by "an ould
aunt he had." His language was so forcible and picturesque that I
despair of conveying its effect, more especially as no pen can
describe the rich brogue, which, notwithstanding his two years'
residence in the States, was still thick enough to be cut with a
knife. Apart from its amusing side, his story has a moral, and may be
instructively applied.

"'Twas at Ballina I was, the toime o' the Land Lague. 'Twas there
Captain Moonlight started from, an' the whole disthrict was shiverin'
in their shoes. I refused to subscribe to the Land Lague, an' they
started to compil me, but, be the powers, they tackled the wrong
tom-cat whin they wint to coarce Dennis Mulcahy. Threatenin' letthers,
wid pictures o' death's-heads, an' guns, an' pikes, an' coffins, was
but a thrifle to the way they wint on. But they knew I had a thrifle
of a sivin-shooter, an' bad luck to the one o' thim that dared mislist
me at all. At last it got abroad that I was to get a batin' wid
blackthorn sticks, for they wor tired the life out o' them, raisonin'
wid me. Well, says I, I'm here, says I, an' the first man that raises
a hand to me, I'll invite him to his own inquist, says I, for, bedad,
I'll perforate him like a riddle, says I. Well, it wint on an' on,
till one day I was stayin' at a bit of a shebeen outside the place,
when a slip o' a girleen kem to me--I was sittin' on a bench in the
back garden, the way I'd enjoy my pipe in the fresh air, an', says
she, 'Get out o' this, for there's a whole crew o' thim inside going
to bate you.' That was six or seven o' a